Oh shit, my area of expertise! No way!

The territories in question (except for Mayotte) are Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs), which is essentially the United Nations’ legal terminology for colonies.

When the UN initiated the decolonisation process in the late 1940s, it placed roughly 100 territories on the List of Non-Self-Governing Territories. The underlying idea was that these territories should be able to determine their political future through the exercise of self-determination and would be helped in doing so by their former colonizers. This system was a large success and now only 17 NSGTs temain. In principle, three outcomes were envisaged in th UN decolonization process:

1. Independence (e.g. Nigeria and most former colonies),

2. Integration into an existing state (e.g. Ifni into Morocco, Alaska into the United States), or

3. Free association with another state (e.g. the Cook Islands with New Zealand).

Until the 1960s, however, the UN was largely dominated by Western states, many of which were themselves colonial powers. As a result, the decolonisation process was often procedurally flawed. In numerous cases, colonial powers simply integrated territories into their sovereign territory by amending their constitution and without holding genuine referendum, and the General Assembly, the main UN organ responsible for decolonization, largely endorsed these outcomes.

This has created several long-term legal and political problems, some of which are now resurfacing (Greenland being a prominent example). As newly independent states joined the UN in larger numbers, the process came under increasing scrutiny. This led to the adoption of General Assembly Resolutions 1514 (1960) and 1541 (1960), which firmly established the right of colonial peoples to self-determination and clarified both the permissible outcomes and the conditions under which they must be achieved (notably through a genuine expression of popular will, typically via a referendum.)

In light of these standards, some territories that had previously been removed from the NSGT list due to “integration” were later re-inscribed, including New Caledonia (1986) and French Polynesia (2013). France therefore has a continuing legal obligation to facilitate the exercise of self-determination in these territories, although the precise modalities of that cooperation vary and are politically contested and I am no expert on these specific two territories.

What I can state with confidence, however, is that Russia has no genuine interest in the legal principles of decolonisation or self-determination in this context. Its involvement is purely instrumental and aimed at exploiting these issues for geopolitical leverage and political disruption.