Ukraine's Foreign Ministry Rejects Mélenchon's Donbas Referendum Proposal: Votes Under Occupation Are a Tool of Annexation
Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on November 9 rejected a proposal on the Donbas by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France's hard-left France Unbowed party and a candidate in the 2027 presidential election. Tykhyi said Ukrainians had already settled the question of their country's borders in the 1991 independence referendum, that Russia had disregarded that choice by invading, and that so-called referendums held under occupation are a tool of annexation, not an expression of the people's will.
Mélenchon, addressing more than 20,000 supporters at a programme rally in Le Bourget near Paris on November 7, had argued that any peace settlement involving territorial concessions in Ukraine should first seek the consent of the people concerned, consulting Donbas residents on whether they wished to live on one side of the border or the other. Tykhyi cited the 1991 vote, in which more than 90 percent of Ukrainians backed independence within the country's internationally recognised borders, including 83 percent in the Donbas.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot also weighed in on November 8, accusing Mélenchon of having become a spokesman for the Kremlin and saying the gravity of the remarks disqualified him from the office he seeks. Kyiv has so far formally refused any territorial concession over the Donbas.
(Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine)
Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：法国「不屈法国」党领袖梅朗雄（资料图）。照片：Pierre-Selim 摄，CC BY 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France's France Unbowed party (file photo). Photo by Pierre-Selim, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-11-09Ukraine's Foreign Ministry Rejects Mélenchon's Donbas Referendum Proposal: Votes Under Occupation Are a Tool of AnnexationThis story
- 2026-11-10Zelensky in Copenhagen: My Job Is Not to Make Trump Happy, It Is to Bring Americans and Europeans to the Talks
- 2026-11-11Russian Diplomat: Moscow Could Sign Non-Aggression Pacts With Individual NATO Members as Part of a New European Security Framework
- 2026-11-11Zelensky in Dublin Rejects Trading Donbas for Security: Ceding Land Will Not Bring Peace
- 2026-11-11'I Can't Forgive': Chernihiv Headteacher on Two 15-Year-Old Students Killed in Russian Strike
