DHAKA: Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Sunday that the Ukraine crisis underscored the need to protect the right of nations to map out their own future.

In an op-ed entitled ‘The right to choose’, the outgoing secretary general called Russia’s actions in Crimea a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, which undermined the rule of international law.

‘And they flout the principle that every state is sovereign, and free to choose its own fate,’ Rasmussen said in an article for Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper which was also published in other Nato member states.

Freedom of choice helped Europe overcome its Cold War divisions, he said, but added that ‘the crisis in Ukraine is a reminder to us all that we must defend that principle’, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1831 HRS, MAR 30, 2014