SL, tinerilor diplomați.
Today, we must expand dialogue instead of curtailing it. We have repeatedly said that we can overcome numerous contemporary problems by pooling our efforts and on the basis of generally recognised norms of international law. In this connection, it is hard to overestimate the potential of classic diplomacy which paves the way to well-thought-out compromises and a balance of interests. I am confident that, objectively speaking, its role should increase.
Those staking on force, hegemony and unilateralism, instead of diplomacy, obtain lamentable results. Suffice it to recall the aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, an attempt to demolish Syria following these reckless undertakings, as well as the well-orchestrated colour revolutions in a number of countries. All this cost humankind hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives and brought chaos to various regions of the world.
Obviously, a striving to address one’s own problems at the expense of others has never yielded reliable and stable results. Moreover, this destructive line is doomed to fail today. It is common knowledge that in the past 25 years genuine tectonic shifts have taken place on the international scene. Powerful and independent players have emerged in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, and they are asserting themselves more actively. They implement a foreign policy line catering to their national interests, and they strengthen their own sovereignty and score impressive successes in various spheres. Objectively speaking, the modern world is multipolar. It is impossible to ignore this geopolitical reality.
In these conditions, Russia, the largest Eurasian and Euro-Pacific civilisation and a civilisation state, continues to implement a peaceful foreign policy line and to promote a positive and unifying global and regional agenda that looks to the future.
We are firmly committed to fundamental principles of international communication formalised in the UN Charter. First of all, this includes the sovereign equality of states, large and small. We consistently advocate respect for the cultural and civilisational diversity among nations and their right to determine their own destiny.
At the same time, we emphatically reject the neo-colonialist rules-based order being imposed by the US-led collective West. This order presupposes a racist division of the world into a group of exceptional states that a priori have the right to do everything they want and all other countries that must follow in the wake of the Golden Billion and cater to its interests.
While implementing this line, we continue to expand and deepen fruitful cooperation with an overwhelming majority of the international community’s members that account for over 80 percent of the planet’s population. They include our allies, like-minded states and friends, members of the CSTO, the EAEU, the CIS, BRICS, the SCO and RIC.
SL, interviu despre NAM.
The movement consistently upholds the UN Charter principles, which is a courageous act given the circumstances when the West, in an attempt to maintain dominance and to go against the objective course of history, is tearing up international law and imposing a rules-based order on everyone. They choose not to clarify what stands behind this term. The “rules” are made up to achieve a specific goal pursued by the West. The principles underlying these Western “rules” can be contradictory. When needed, the West can recognise independence that was proclaimed unilaterally and illegitimately, without any referendum, as was the case in Kosovo. However, an open referendum in Crimea that was observed by numerous representatives of civil society from Western and other countries was declared illegitimate.
[…]
Today, the West is forcing everyone in a frenzied manner (I cannot suggest any other word) to toe an anti-Russia line. Apart from voting in favour of dubious resolutions that blame Russia contrary to existing facts, other countries are supposed to implement practical measures, limit exports to Russia and import fewer Russian goods, cut transport ties, sever logistics chains and do lots more. Although members of the Non-Aligned Movement are not yielding to this blackmail, some of them are forced to make certain concessions under Western pressure during voting, but none of them are joining the sanctions. However, they continue to be under pressure. Quite possibly, completely banned ploys will be used under the no-holds-barred principle, and this will be on the conscience of our Western colleagues.
[…]
[T]he Non-Aligned Movement is a heterogeneous organism. As we have learned, it includes the so-called democracies and electoral autocracies, monarchies and many other state-system formats; each of them has sovereign equality under the UN Charter. In the past few years, the West has been trying to differentiate between democracies and all others. The United States will confer the title of democracies. The United States tried to do this in late 2021 by convening the Summit for Democracy. After reading the list of invited participants, one can see that Washington invited only those who are loyal to it and those whom it needs. You will be elevated to the rank of a democracy if you are loyal and if they need you.
MZ:
Six months into the special military operation in Ukraine and Donbass, we continue to find more evidence every day that Russia had no other choice but to immediately stand up for the long-suffering population of the DPR and LPR, to begin the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, and to eliminate the threats to Russia’s security emanating from its territory. As the leadership of our country has repeatedly said, all these goals will definitely be attained.
Kiev makes no effort to hide the fact that it has long been preparing for an armed confrontation with Russia. This is the answer to those who said that they did not know anything, and that it all happened unexpectedly, while the “peaceful Kiev regime” was trying and failing to fulfil the Minsk agreements.
On August 26, NSDC Secretary Alexey Danilov publicly admitted (in an interview, not an interrogation – not yet) that the day after the Normandy format summit in Paris in December 2019, the Ukrainian leaders came to the conclusion that “a major war with Russia was inevitable.” The cynicism of such statements is simply off the charts. It was President Zelensky who tried everything then to hinder any real steps to resolve the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, and then began to accuse Russia of allegedly violating the agreements reached. He went on to say that it was time for the Kiev regime to acquire nuclear weapons, and things would get better. As we always say, the truth will eventually come out. Ukrainian politicians have realised that justice was inevitable and are now giving confessions on television. They have confessed to who really torpedoed the Minsk agreements, who prepared for war, who did it in theory and in practice, by receiving supplies of Western offensive weapons, as well as predicting the onslaught of hostilities. This is a confession of the “gravediggers” for their own country.
There is more evidence confirming the neo-Nazi bent of the current Ukrainian regime – the Russophobic revelations uttered by the Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Pyotr Vrublevsky. Here is a direct quote from a man who calls himself not just a representative of Ukraine, but a Ukrainian ambassador. On August 22, this creature (I cannot call him a diplomat) publicly stated the following: “We are trying to kill as many Russians as possible. The more Russians we kill now, the fewer our children will have to. That’s it.” Well, he’s definitely right about one thing – that was it. They have confessed everything themselves.
Nazism, fascism, nationalism ‒ new manifestations of what was supposed to remain in historical memory (not only the swastika tattoos and Azov symbols rooted in the symbolism of SS battalions). First of all, it is the ideology that prohibits ethnicities on their indigenous land from developing their culture and identity. It is a misanthropic ideology, a hatred that extends to the desire to exterminate an ethnicity or a culture – simply because they are unwanted or considered rivals. This is what the people of Donbass are revolting against and what the Crimeans escaped at the time. It is not something we can accept now because it would make us collaborationists and appeasers of neo-Nazi ideology.
The Kiev regime spoke out of its own will. It is hard to say whether it came out of fear, stupidity or shock. People don’t just let their conscious mind out like that (or it comes out without asking for permission) and reveal carefully guarded secrets. It is for therapists, psychotherapists, political analysts and historians to interpret. They started condemning themselves. It never happened so widely before. We saw exposing symptoms. And now everybody is talking.
We commented on the statements made by the Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan. We saw the reaction of our Kazakh colleagues. They will not go unanswered.
One of the reasons why Kiev is doing all this is it expects to keep receiving new modern weapons and more financial aid from the West and the United States, in particular. Why am I linking the nationalist, neo-Nazi activity, logic and ideology of the Kiev regime to the United States? You could say it is a bit of a stretch. But no. Remember the statement made by former two-time US president and the son of a former US president George W. Bush? A couple of months back, he had said what the Ukrainian Ambassador reiterated in Kazakhstan. Those were the words of a member of the American political (financial, economic and energy) establishment. The deep state itself, a state within a state. Believing that he was talking to Vladimir Zelensky, George Bush said that Ukraine’s mission is “to destroy as many Russian troops” as possible. So, when I comment on the nationalist logic, I immediately refer to Washington and those who ideologically inspire the Kiev regime on the current track.
US media report that new financial aid packages and other assistance, as well as the situation on the ground will be discussed at the fifth meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in the so-called Ramstein format, to be held in person on September 8 and chaired by Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin. They have come full circle.
Today, allied forces are advancing slowly but surely, ridding and liberating Donbass of the neo-Nazis who had turned its cities and villages into fortified settlements over the last eight years. All this draws the ire of the military-political leadership of the Kiev regime that continues to issue crazy and criminal orders on launching all-out strikes against civilian facilities in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and on the liberated territories in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Their purpose is to inflict maximum possible damage and kill and wound even more civilians. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are pounding kindergartens, schools and other education institutions in a particularly furious manner. This seems even more blasphemous ahead of September 1. We have seen this before. We recall vividly the Beslan tragedy that happened as children were returning to school. The entire world refers to those who perpetrated this outrage and who hit children’s institutions, especially on September 1, as terrorists. People shelling and hitting institutions for children, all the more so on September 1, are terrorists. It is impossible to find any other definition for them.
We are extremely concerned about the growing tensions around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), the largest in Europe. It may be surprising, but Russia seems to be the only country that sounds worried. It appears that the NPP is located far from Europe, and that the people of Europe are well-protected. This sounds like a different “fairy tale,” and it appears that any subsequent developments will not affect anyone, including people on the European continent. This is a “dream of reason.” Ukrainian neo-Nazis use NATO weapons, including large-calibre artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and drones, to hit the NPP’s facilities, including those whose destruction can lead to unpredictable consequences. Representatives of liberal Western regimes are not even bothering to ask whether Ukraine is using their weapons for shelling the Zaporozhye NPP. They do not even discuss the hypothetical tragedy that their munitions can cause. This includes power substations and facilities for storing spent and previously unused nuclear fuel, etc.
We hope the IAEA inspectors, scheduled to visit the NPP on August 31, will help stop the presumptuous Ukrainian authorities in their effort to instigate a nuclear disaster, and that they will help end this nuclear blackmail.
We have repeatedly noted Kiev’s inhumane attitude towards people’s lives. The Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist groups continue to use unacceptable warfare methods, and they are using civilians as human shields. The media reported the other day that the Ukrainian Armed Forces used chemical weapons against Russian service personnel in the Zaporozhye Region.
The stance taken by the Western countries and the UN Secretariat is just bewildering. When asked directly who is shelling the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, they say they do not know; they have no opinion on that. What do you mean, no opinion? They have opinions on “gang rapes” and the like. They know for sure that Russians are doing this. With any other crimes, they immediately point a finger at Moscow. What is this strange indecision now? What more do they need? Drones for monitoring, satellite data, reports on the ground? What is holding them back from calling a spade a spade and noticing that the shells are flying from the side controlled by the Kiev regime? Can they even tell wind direction? If they can, they should also be able to tell where the shelling is coming from. What happened? Why are they suddenly forgetful?
At the same time, the region’s military-civilian administration reports that the Ukrainian authorities could also start bacteriological provocations and terror against the local population. With the incessant shelling of the peaceful cities in the DPR and LPR and other southeastern regions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it has long become clear that the Kiev regime could not care less what happens to the people in these regions. And elsewhere, too, for that matter, given that they are shelling a nuclear power facility.
I can see that the EU is now busy with a more important decision – whether or not to issue visas to Russians. But radiation doesn’t have a passport. It doesn’t need a visa to cross borders. If something happens at Zaporozhye, it will not be about visas, passports or borders. For some incomprehensible reason, the European Union is showing little concern about this matter. The liberal European regimes have made a lot of self-destructive and suicidal decisions. Perhaps this is another coin in the piggybank.
We are confident that, once this special military operation is completed, all the people in today’s Ukraine will be able to start a peaceful life in a free country, with no Nazis, no shells falling on cities, no discrimination (based on nationality or language), and where international humanitarian norms, and everyone’s rights and freedoms are respected.
[…]
[A] cohort of countries is emerging where Nazi collaborators are cast as members of national liberation movements who fought for the so-called independence of their countries. It does not matter what they were fighting for, but together with the Nazis and fascists, they exterminated people in the 1940s on the grounds of race and ethnic background. There can be a long debate over how they referred to themselves and their motivation but that has nothing to do with the fact that they engaged in criminal activity. There is a number of educational and awareness measures in the pipeline, as well as a broader effort to reformat public opinion. Educational programmes and cultural projects extol the would-be feats of members of voluntary national SS legions who fought for Hitler’s Germany and contributed to mass civilian killings many times. Governments are encouraging nationalists and radicals, as well as right-wing extremists who often form the main driving force of the cynical war on monuments to Soviet liberator soldiers. In exchange for fighting the Russian world and Soviet memorials, nationalists get the privilege of dictating what it means to be a patriot to the rest of the society. They are doing this for money they receive as grants and assistance, and do not shy away from outright blackmail and intimidation.
Apart from Ukraine, we are witnessing the most dangerous situation in the Baltic states, Poland and the Czech Republic. Over the past year, May 9 celebrations caused unimaginable hysteria tainted with Russophobic undertones. All this started a long time ago, transcending all boundaries and suppressing all dissent. Over the past decades, this trend has been gaining momentum and reached an abysmal low. We are witnessing acts of vandalism perpetrated against memorials to Red Army soldiers, attacks against Russian diplomats taking part in May 9 commemorations, with the memorials closed to the public. People who voiced their disagreement were ostracised, persecuted and repressed. All three Baltic countries launched a campaign to dismantle all Soviet monuments as quickly as possible, which runs counter to the resolution the UN General Assembly adopts annually on fighting the glorification of Nazism. This culmination of the neo-Nazi ideology will come when countries start changing the way they vote on this resolution. This way, countries perpetrating these outrageous acts will not be able to say that all this is happening in our imagination. This will be a position expressed by the state and demonstrating that it has changed its position on the issue of neo-Nazism.
The proactive efforts by the governments in these countries to build monoethnic societies around titular nations and step up their campaign to glorify Nazi collaborators as part of the new national history they are about to write – all this exacerbates the human rights situation for ethnic minorities and groups, primarily the Russian speakers, who face discrimination of various kinds.
There is another group of countries where governments are ignoring these manifestations, while embellishing the unflattering aspects of their past, including the racist policies towards their own colonies and the fact that they exterminated indigenous people. These countries prefer to look the other way not only when it comes to the manifestations of racism and discrimination, but, following the principles articulated by a small minority, they are doing everything to conceal the Kiev regime’s Nazi nature from the international community, whitewashing and glorifying the Nazi aspects within the Ukrainian state in the form of racial nationalist units, primarily, the Azov battalion. They offer them funding and support.
[…]
We maintain that the United States and its allies must assume most of the financial burden for rebuilding this country. They are responsible for the current situation following their escape from Kabul exactly one year ago, on August 31, 2021. It is worth noting that they spare nothing for the Kiev regime. The media has reported a new aid package worth $3 billion. This money does not necessarily leave American financial institutions, state agencies and private companies that help American citizens get rid of extra money. For 20 years, they tortured the country with their presence and destroying everything. We have seen many things there. They fled in a horrible and shameful manner. Not even fled, but crawled in different directions. Where is the money for rebuilding Afghanistan? I am talking about the NATO-centric community. You made a mess there for 20 years, and now it is time to clean up after yourself. This is precisely their logic.
[…]
[…] EU seems to be thinking in the context of spheres of influence and seizing the territories of neighbouring states and those further off. One gets the impression that they are reinstating colonialism and an imperialist mentality that was a typical feature until the mid-20th century. It seems that factors contributing to the further progression of this “disease” have disappeared, but we are now back to square one. As we can see, this ideology continues to develop.
The expansionist policy of the EU has evolved from preparing candidates for EU membership into a geopolitical tool. They are using candidates (aspiring EU members) as sales markets and as sources of cheap labour. They are reviving an imperialist and colonialist ideology. They are forcing these countries to join in with EU decisions that they never helped adopt and that run counter to their national interests. This is all politically interlinked. Anyone wishing to join the EU or to obtain economic bonuses has to swear political allegiance to the organisation. Just sign here. Or you will be denied membership.
[…]
Do you remember how Poland, Hungary or other countries tried to promote their national interests? What was the result for them? Arbitration, political threats and being exposed to pressure mechanisms. This is just like in Ivan Krylov’s fable: “And you, my friends, no matter your positions, will never be musicians!” This is a matter of ideology, and they have a wrong one. It came to dominate and supplant everything, not just pragmatic considerations, but law and legal affairs, principles and values which were presented as perennial. Political ideology came to dominate democracy and its liberal manifestations, and I am referring to the positive sides of liberalism. This ideology-driven approach became dominant and found its bearings. What kind of ideology are we talking about? This is an interesting question. Turns out, this ideology consists of the strong dictating their will to the weak and having those who have a bigger say in the decision-making process impose their will on others. People, actors, players may come and go, and with them ideological tenets also change. Nobody cares that people are the ones who suffer for acting as they were told by the preceding decision-makers. So what? This is how it goes. Unfortunately, this illustrates what is currently going on within the EU.
SL, la maraton. (memorare, memorare)
Diplomacy is primarily an ability to listen, hear and convince. It’s a great regret but over the past few years, especially after the end of the Cold War, everyone thought an era of general welfare had arrived. Some political scientists even announced “the end of history.” They maintained that from now on “liberal values” would prevail forever throughout the entire world. Striving to declare “victory” in the Cold War and to assert one’s domination has nothing to do with diplomacy. This is pure dictate, especially if we consider the methods used by the West. It resorts to threats, blackmail, unlawful sanctions, organisation of colour revolutions, and interference in domestic affairs with the use of crude force. This is what happened in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011. The same applies to colour revolutions staged in the post-Soviet space, including our much-suffering neighbour Ukraine.
Russia does not accept such logic. What we are now facing in world history is not at all about Ukraine, if we mean the interests of the Ukrainian people. It is about the shameless use of Ukraine by the United States and its satellites. They want to create what President of Russia Vladimir Putin called “anti-Russia” as an instrument to weaken our country. They want to turn Ukraine into a bridgehead for creating material and physical threats to our security. What we are seeing now as the Western response to the implementation of the special military operation clearly shows that the West has pursued global goals from the very start. It wanted to weaken Russia. Now even some political scientists in the West admit that this weakening included an attempt to split our country.
The era we are living in is truly a long historical period. We have to be ready to count only on ourselves. Western countries’ inability to negotiate – and they promised us not to expand NATO to the east, declared their values as universal and subscribed to the principle of indivisible security, committed to not strengthening their own security at the expense of others – means that all these promises have been thrown in the rubbish. Now we can clearly see that the West is unable to negotiate. We will continue to promote our agenda based on the principles of the UN Charter. The key principle is respecting the sovereign equality of states. It has been directly violated by Americans, their allies in Europe and elsewhere.
[…]
The prevailing tendencies in the world are those in favour of returning to the origins of the UN Charter and equal and mutually beneficial cooperation. When our Western partners get over this stage of obscurantism and decide to return to normal, human and equal communication, we must be ready to accept them into the community of sensible states on conditions satisfactory to all. I want to stress that these conditions are mainly compliance with the UN Charter and respect for the sovereign equality of states.
[…]
Regarding Ilyin’s works, this is not about “ancient” philosophy alone. About two months ago, they started creating a new organisation for the decolonisation of the Russian Federation. People are acting serious, meeting, giving interviews and showing maps used at Western political science centres. Today, these maps are here for everyone to see. They want to divide Russia into 30 parts.
SL, la MGIMO. (memorare, memorare)
We have drawn conclusions based on the long years after the Cold War. At that time, as we built relations with the West, we tried in every way to promote and apply the slogans the Western countries offered to us during the perestroika, and later, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist – universal values, a single economic and humanitarian space, a security space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, indivisible security, no country shall strengthen its security at the expense of others, no military alliance in Europe shall dominate. We tried to do everything honestly. We developed, put together and implemented an unprecedentedly extensive array of cooperation mechanisms with the European Union: biennial summits, annual meetings between the Russian Government and the European Commission members, four common spaces with four roadmaps adopted. They were implemented with a view to introducing common norms into our daily lives – mostly European norms. We had agreements in place on 20 industry-based dialogues – from human rights to the environment, business, technology, space – too many things to list.
We placed a major emphasis on the visa-free dialogue, which led to the signing of a visa facilitation agreement in 2007, at the first stage (the deal the European Union now wants to suspend or cancel). The dialogue continued with plans to transition to visa-free travel. Everything was ready by 2013, before the events in Ukraine that the West used as an excuse to disrupt all our channels of interaction. But in 2013, when it was all ready, the visa-free travel deal between Russia and the EU was blocked, for overtly political reasons, by a group of countries, including the Baltic states and Poland. The reasons they gave to the European Union during the discussions were as follows: yes, from a technical point of view, both biometric visas and readmission were provided. We have concluded readmission agreements with all EU countries in preparation for the visa-free deal. But for political reasons, the Baltic states did not want Russia to have visa-free travel before Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova received it. So much for values, equality, impartiality and things like that. Still, it took us a long time to learn the lesson. Every time our partners behaved improperly, we thought we needed to “talk” to them, and they would see reason, and we would move towards the “slogans” they had proposed and we approved. It never worked.
We have no illusions left. It’s impossible to negotiate with the Europeans, or the Americans – that much is obvious. They cut off all the channels that I just mentioned, all forms of interaction. We can no longer rely on them, considering what they are doing, with the sanctions; we can no longer rely on them with regard to key technologies for our security, for food security, or for an accelerated development of our society.
[…] [O]ur life and politics will not hang on a hope that things will get back to normal in a year, two, three or even four or five years, instead of fully engaging in creating alternative formats for solving our development problems; this would be an unpromising and illusory position.