În sfârșit, în Rusia există libertatea cuvântului!
On September 27, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions completed referendums on accession to the Russian Federation. The high voter turnout and the results speak for themselves: the people in those regions do not want to return to their former lives. They have paid a high price for their future and proved that they have the right to a peaceful life. These people have rebelled against terrorism and the dragged-out war the Kiev neo-Nazi regime unleashed against its own people. This is how it went in Donbass, and later in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
Once again, I am highlighting something that is obvious to anyone who has been truly interested in these developments, and not just relying on the global mainstream “news.” These people have made a conscious and free choice. They have declared, loudly and firmly, to the whole world their desire to be together with Russia from now on, to link their future forever with our country, which was, is and will be their historical homeland.
They had given Ukraine a chance to treat them as its citizens. The Kiev regime, the politicians who lost their independence and delegated decision-making to their foreign handlers, failed to take advantage of that high honour. Perhaps some well-fed and pompous witnesses of liberal totalitarianism, many of whom are now queuing outside foreign embassies here, are unable to understand this. They think “well-being” is about maintaining their petty, narrow comfort zone. It’s beyond their scope to think about others. They know nothing about compassion or making sacrifices for the sake of a loved one, or for the sake of someone who asks for help. They don’t know what these things are; it happens.
I am saying this to those who have been professing the logic of a liberal dictatorship for many years. The spirit is stronger than circumstances, threats or temptations. I am addressing the Western countries. You and we have different “prides.” You chose to rely on your partners “in the flesh,” and we chose partners in spirit.
I want to stress that the referendums in the DPR, LPR, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions have been held in full accordance with the norms and principles of international law (no matter how strongly anyone might dislike this); they were fully legal and did not run counter to world practice. Many would ask: which norms and principles? Where can they be found? They’re right there. In the fundamental body of international law, including the UN Charter and other documents adopted by the United Nations. Just allow yourself to be objective. Try to see not what you want to see or what is being imposed on you – but try to analyze the situation thoughtfully, relying on historical facts and current realities, and assess what happened in full accordance with international law.
Both Kiev and the West are well aware of this. They only pretend they don’t understand. They do not want to allow the public in their countries to understand or assess the situation from the point of view of international law. The people of Donbass and southern Ukraine have exercised their right to self-determination. Let someone say it is not so. They did this in accordance with the UN Charter, as well as with those practices and norms that the West had never denied before, and even sometimes applied. However, the Zelensky regime and its American handlers do not want to accept reality, or to see this side of international law. On the contrary, they cynically question the procedure for holding a plebiscite and its results, dismissing them as insignificant and incompatible with democracy. What was the word Vladimir Zelensky used [to call the people in Donbass]? Inhuman species? Is this why what they want is insignificant? No. They are questioning both essence and form. Labeling and calling names. They are doing everything to show off their importance and prove they are right. They are using the sacred – the icon of democracy. This would make sense if they themselves had not deviated from it a long time ago. Look who is doing this – those who have been grossly violating human rights for years – in Ukraine, in the Western countries, as well as in countries they have occupied in various parts of the world. They have contributed to transforming the young Ukrainian state into a totalitarian, aggressive, neo-Nazi regime, encouraging it with money and arms supplies to use artillery on peaceful cities. I can see that for these people, the referendum is nothing, of course. All they heed is the voice of guns. People’s voices don’t matter to them. And neither do the lives of each of the inhabitants of the regions in question.
As soon as the referendums in the DPR, the LPR, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions were announced, Kiev sharply intensified the shelling of these areas in feeble outrage. Didn’t the same happen in February 2022 when Russia recognised their sovereignty? Didn’t it start the same way? Didn’t we see the same thing when all participants signed the Minsk agreements? Having displayed goodwill, Russia suggested following the path of peace, talks and political efforts, and drafted the Minsk package of agreements. What happened a couple of months after everyone left Minsk? We saw the bestial grin of the Kiev regime when they started “fulfilling” these peace agreements. If they had been allowed, they would have smashed everything in their way but they were simply not allowed to do this and won’t be allowed to do it in the future.
The blows were deliberately inflicted on large groups of people to prevent them from voting. Listen to what people are saying in these regions. They were looking for a chance to leave their homes and run in short bursts to the polling stations. This is in the 21st century. Advanced democracies were destroying people who wanted to vote at a referendum. How many civilian facilities have been destroyed in these years? On this day alone, attacks were carried out on a gas pipeline, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, cultural centres and markets. You don’t see this, our freedom-lovers? Or is it again because these are the “wrong” people? Or, are they not people at all in the West’s opinion?
In the process, the Kiev regime was using US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. The Ukrainian armed forces always coordinate the final choice of targets with the US military command. Judging by everything we see, representatives of this command have assumed real control over Ukraine’s forces. The goal of these terrorist attacks is clear – to intimidate the people, force them to renounce their choice, drive all of them into a corner and make them believe that there is no justice in this world, that there will never be any. This is an attempt to make them believe that the rule of force will always prevail. But this is not so. These are the people of Donbass. Life has hardened them. They have a spirit, and freedom in the true sense of the word. The people of Donbass, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions have not been broken. Washington demonstrated again to what extent it had lost touch with reality, having actually become a party to the conflict.
More evidence of this is the tentative agreement reached in the US Congress the other day on granting Kiev a new package of aid to the tune of almost $12 billion. What are these funds spent on? On schools, hospitals, a gas or oil pipeline? On the purchase of manuals, benefits for the poor, measures to counter the pandemic? Certainly not. The lion’s share of these funds will again be spent on the purchase of arms for Kiev and will “dissolve” in the pockets of those who allocate them. The amount of US financial aid to the Zelensky regime will soon reach an astronomical $26 billion (since Joseph Biden’s inauguration, Washington alone has spent over $14 billion on Ukraine’s military needs). Nothing to be sorry about. In their view, these arms kill “species,” not humans. So, no pity for them at all. The United States is printing empty, completely unsecured money. We are seeing that no amount of money will help the Kiev regime regain control over the people who have chosen freedom instead of coercion. What weren’t they promised! They were not only intimidated. Attempts were made “to buy” them at some point, they were promised “manna from heaven,” all kinds of well-being, and a visa-free regime with the European Union (which was denied to our country for unknown reasons). Years ago, they simply told us that they failed to coordinate technical issues and then shut off the negotiating process. All those who swore allegiance to liberal totalitarianism were presented with this visa-free regime and were allowed “to play.”
These people were promised many things. It is surprising that in the 21st century they truly chose freedom of conscience and historical memory. They chose freedom without which no future is possible. They turned down sweet slavery for which they had to renounce themselves.
The Kiev regime should not hope for outside aid in its attempts to rock the boat in Russia. It failed to do this and will never succeed. We will uphold the freedom and independence of our state. Our people remain loyal to the historical heritage of their predecessors. In times of trial, they pooled their efforts and stood up to defend their homeland without any ethnic, class or political distinctions. They saw that they were needed and stood up. The same is taking place now. We advise those who doubt this to reread the pages of history, especially of the Great Patriotic War. While rereading, look what publishing house issued it to avoid a version released with the blessing of the Kiev regime or of some American institute of historical studies (or Britain’s, God forbid), with numerous falsifications and opportunistic adjustments. Read real documents that convincingly depict the heroism of the Soviet people who crushed the enemy and defeated Nazism. At that time, they were not entirely sure what they opposed. Only we managed, by looking into the past, to understand the scale of what had been planned for us. Our ancestors were promised (like we are being promised now, along with threats) a sweet life and a bright, luxurious future. On the one hand, they made all these promises, throwing leaflets, “Russian Ivan, give up!” and, on the other, they killed people in gas chambers. The plans of what they wanted to do with us were signed long before 1941.
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When commenting on the course of the special military operation in Ukraine, we have repeatedly drawn public attention to the absolutely unacceptable actions of the Ukrainian army and nationalist units that violate all the principles and norms of international humanitarian law. They are guided by NATO manuals and using the tactics of ISIS, setting up firing positions and ammunition depots in schools, hospitals, and residential buildings, using civilians as a human shield, and shooting refugees. All this has resulted in numerous civilian casualties. There is no need to talk about infrastructure: it is being shelled exactly so that the civilian population cannot exist, cannot survive.
In this context, we are not surprised to see that Western media (I hope there are still people there who can think somehow), including leading Western agencies, remain deaf to the dozens of people dying daily in Donbass in inhuman shelling by heavy weapons supplied by the United States and its allies to Ukraine. In particular, from HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, the use of which, as they say in Kiev, must be coordinated with the American side for each specific target. Are they really disinterested? And why have there been no investigations? I know. As many American experts tell us, everyone who dared to ask this question (not even write something) is excluded from the information space; they are no longer invited to conferences and events, their articles are not published, they are not given a chance to take interviews. In social media, everything is simple: they learned how to “cancel.” The button is pressed and there is no account, no media, no journalists.
I would like to comment on Izyum. After the regrouping of the allied forces in the Kharkov Region, the Zelensky regime is trying in every possible way to repeat the Bucha scenario (which they tried to author themselves) in this city by artificially fabricating evidence of “crimes” by the Russian military.
They are using the same methods. It is alleged that the Ukrainian police found almost 10 torture prisons, as well as mass graves. Terrible figures are shown: about 450 burial sites. We sent packages of materials about mass graves with genuine photographs and videos to the capitals of Western states. It also became the property of the media. There was no reaction. But these are the same people (as Vladimir Zelensky said, “non-humans,” “beings”) whom they officially call citizens of Ukraine. Where were they in their Kiev “underground?” Were they not interested in the fact that for many years people were buried, including alive? Now, all of a sudden, they’ve “learned” from Hollywood screenplays. The remains are being exhumed to avoid failures like the Kiev regime invented in Bucha.
But they fail at this. There are so many inconsistencies that it is impossible to play up this topic anymore. Many graves say March 9, 2022, while units of the allied forces began to enter Izyum on March 15, 2022, and took control of it by the beginning of April 2022. If these people died from violence and torture, then it was at the hands of the Kiev regime’s punishers.
It is worth noting that right after Izyum was taken by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on September 9, British journalists from The Daily Telegraph visited the place. They found no traces of massacres and quoted locals as saying there were no arrests, torture or executions. And on September 20, Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets would not allow Western correspondents (not Russian, they have not been allowed anywhere for almost 10 years, they have been detained at the border, their accreditation is taken away; they are sent back and put on the Mirotvorets website list) there under the pretext of a mine threat. Apparently, The Daily Telegraph correspondents would not have been missed. Let them blow up, right? Was that the logic? And immediately after that, a surge of humanism. And everything is like this. Staged.
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May I ask a question? When exactly did Russia decide that it no longer wants to supply energy to Europe? According to this logic, there should be a date, a turning point. So, when did we decide that we didn’t want to supply energy to our “Western partners?” Did it happen in the 1960s, when we built the Druzhba pipeline? I would like to remind you that it was a period when the Cold War was gathering momentum, when there was the Iron Curtain and dividing walls, when people didn’t communicate and there was no contact between our civil societies. Nothing was left of our WWII alliance. Was it at that time that we decided not to supply energy to our “Western partners?” Maybe it happened during the Cuban missile crisis, when NATO weapons systems started encircling us? Was it then that the idea dawned on us because we wanted to reciprocate to NATO’s actions against us? No? Did it happen when the Soviet Union fell apart? Or was it in 2014, when large-scale sanctions were adopted against us for the first time? Did we do it in response to these sanctions? It was then that sanctions were for the first time adopted against Russia in such a blatant and frenzied manner. Or did it happen when we started building Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2? Did we build the pipelines, invested in them and provided political and other forms of support to that project only to stop supplying energy to Europe? Is this your logic?
Over the past decades, despite the Cold War and outbursts of seething hot hatred towards us, despite the sanctions, the hybrid war and other dirty tricks used against our country, nobody here said at any level that we wouldn’t supply energy to the citizens of Europe. Never. We have always been a reliable supplier of energy to Europe. And who was it that has really decided to cut short the deliveries of Russian energy and rule out the very possibility of such supplies to Europe? I will tell you.
Since the start of the Nord Stream 2 project, all its participants in Russia and other countries have been subjected to unprecedented US economic and political pressure. Is this a revelation to any of you? Can any of you provide facts that would tear my arguments to shreds? Ready to do anything to hinder the construction of the pipeline and its commissioning, the United States passed legislation in 2020 on punishment for companies that took part in the construction or provided relevant services. These open threats of unilateral sanctions over a purely commercial project, which was designed to reinforce Europe’s energy security showed that Washington doesn’t care one bit for Europe’s real economic interests. Russia has begun its own investigation of the Nord Stream accident. Our law enforcement and security agencies announced this yesterday.
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Today, September 29, is the 81st anniversary of the beginning of mass executions of the Jewish population by the Nazis at the outskirts of the occupied Kiev in Babi Yar. As we know, over a short period of time, 33,771 people were killed in the massacre – women, children and seniors. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1943, 70,000 to 100,000 people in total were executed in the ravine, that is different ethnicities, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners, priests, underground resistance fighters, party members and ordinary civilians. Monuments to those who fought against those crimes are being demolished across Europe today, as if under a pretext, even though it has been a decades-long effort. Who needs more evidence? Isn’t it what we all are standing against?
During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet government repeatedly informed the international community about the occupiers’ atrocities and brutality, about Holocaust victims, including the mass murders of Jews in the Babi Yar ravine and other death camps.
I will never accept the fact that, after the horrendous catastrophes that people on our planet went through, we will only remember the victims, without honouring the memory of and respecting those who prevented those tragedies from spilling over and who sacrificed their lives for those who were killed. We are witnessing the same things happening today. And it is impossible to disregard the victims. It is a fact that cannot be cut out of history. Instead, as the collective West and its satellites believe, it is possible to scorn those who, as they think, never existed, but who actually liberated them and stalled that death factory. This is what they believe and how they act: alright, keep the victims. Although, unfortunately, there is still segregation. Nobody is supposed to know that there were liberators. Liberators will be whoever the West designates, and the others, as they believe, do not even deserve mentioning. Do you know why? It is the same logic. They are not humans or, as Vladimir Zelensky said, they are “creatures.” Representatives of the Soviet Union exposed evidence of such beliefs during the Nuremberg Trials.
Decades later, as a result of an armed anti-constitutional coup, forces openly promoting the ideas of national exceptionalism and glorifying the fascist henchmen who were complicit in the executions of thousands of people, including Jews, came to power in 2014 in Ukraine. I just can’t wrap my head around this fact. What about the others? How are they inferior, peoples from other countries who also perished in gas chambers and were buried alive in mass graves, killed and tortured? Are we no longer talking about them? But we will.
Neo-Nazism has reached a threatening scale in Ukraine. Supporters and practitioners of this misanthropic ideology (today it is an ideology that has become reality) are once again seeking to crush all dissent and to physically eradicate their opponents, just like their ideological masterminds from Hitler’s Germany. We know of so many accounts. The same thing is happening. Look, prisoners become expendables; civilians are tortured. Just like in Nazi Germany, entire stories are being fabricated, and entire cities become the stage for these productions. The exact same things happened then. We see cultural monuments being destroyed, wrong books prohibited, unwanted media outlets shut down, political opposition parties driven out, “compromised” citizens persecuted simply because they consider themselves part of a different culture or just think differently. They are being segregated, to put it mildly, based on ethnicity and language.
The Ukrainian neo-Nazis have long been infatuated with impunity. The atrocities committed by them in Donbass and other regions of the country make our blood run cold. Not because we are afraid, but because we are horrified that it became possible after all the lessons of history. Why? Because these lessons were forgotten. Everything that was unwanted or did not fit into the Western model of supremacy was rubbed out. They claim they won all alone. They claim that two evil empires decided to take on each other in the 20th century, putting the world on the verge of a disaster. This is how those events are presented. Those who did not learn the lessons of the past well enough are going through them again. We have spoken about this so many times. Apparently, everybody has forgotten where pacifying fascism leads us, and what price the people of Europe had to pay to get rid of the horrors of the “brown plague.”
Russia, a country that toiled through the hardships of fighting Nazism, will do everything to destroy it and prevent the tragic mistakes of the past from being made again.
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September 28 marked seven years since the UNESCO General Conference established the International Day for Universal Access to Information in 2015. Adopted back in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets forth in Article 19 the right for everyone to seek, receive and impart information and ideas. Today, 74 years later, we have every reason to state that this fundamental freedom (right to freedom of expression, to seek, receive and impart information) has been trampled by the very liberal and totalitarian regimes which pay so much lip service to democracy, media freedom and the freedom of expression.
We deeply regret the fact that there is not much to celebrate, since the Western media aggression has made ensuring universal access to information in the original sense of the term impossible. Originally conceived as a day for raising international awareness on the key role media pluralism plays in building a genuine democracy, the International Day for Universal Access to Information increasingly resembles a phony ritual designed to create an appearance that everything is well in this sphere. But what is the actual situation? We are witnessing a frontal attack on the global information space by totalitarian neo-liberal censorship.
The West has so far succeeded in purging almost the entire media space of alternative points of view by relying on a wide range of the dirtiest methods. Those who have dissenting views become domestic terrorists in the United States. The Russian media and journalists were the first to suffer this blow: cancelled, removed from the air, blocked broadcasting, designated on sanctions lists, deleted from social media and video hosting services, and subjected to criminal prosecution for many years now. The repression has become so intensive that we had to open a special section to chronicle these abuses on the Foreign Ministry website. We regularly update information on these reprisals. I have talked about this many times. Dominated by the West, specialised international agencies try to pretend that there is nothing that deserves their attention or requires an adequate assessment, as if everything was fine. By acting this way, they encourage even greater fragmentation across the global information space and undermine the system designed to safeguard the human right to free access to information. Where is this freedom of access to information? Just look at what happened over the past days.
This media inquisition continues even today, as we speak, taking on increasingly perverse and sophisticated forms. This week alone, Apple Inc., a US company, deleted a whole series of applications forming VK’s ecosystem from its AppStore. This was done to create maximum challenges for millions of people when trying to exchange any information. There is another recent example – the total ban by the Lithuanian lawmakers on broadcasting any Russian or Belarusian media products in the country regardless of their content. So what about international safeguards enabling anyone to freely receive and impart information? Didn’t they mention this? This time, Vilnius did not even bother present any formal justification. This is ridiculous, since there is no way to justify this. A justification simply does not exist. Senior executives at Meta, a corporation banned in Russia, recognised that they work with US intelligence agencies and said that they regularly censor accounts on their online platforms at their discretion and following up on their contacts with the US intelligence agencies. These are just the most notable developments we saw over the past few days. This is the reality we live in. How much has been done and will be done? What a wonderful backdrop for the International Day for Universal Access to Information. Has anybody in the West spoken out on this issue? Has anyone said or done anything? What about the international unions of journalists, correspondents, or associations defending the freedom of speech? There are so many of them. The US Department of State feeds hundreds of thousands of them through its grants. Where are you all?
We are certain that the West will not succeed in its efforts to seal societies in their isolated media bubbles with a lopsided projection of the world free from any additives. Otherwise, this will be the end for them. The truth will find a way to break through. This has already happened before. I think that this will also be the case now no matter how hard the liberal censors try to shield themselves from information and facts. Let us hope that while this is happening this day will not digress into an entertainment event deprived of any meaning.
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As for our goals and objectives, we will do everything to achieve them, as has been said. This is not a question of expanding territories, or of our financial power, or of our vision of this particular situation, but of how the world will develop further. Whether it will develop under the boot of those people who profess the logic of neoliberal totalitarianism, forbidding everyone else from having a different opinion and pursuing such dictatorial ambitions, or whether we all will still be free.
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I hope that independent investigators in the US and maybe even in Europe (although, unfortunately there is no hope for Europe) will develop the desire to identify the involvement of the US secret services and any other body in what happened in the Baltic Sea on September 25-27. I know why many are silent. Because they see what was done to Julian Assange and what could be done to Edward Snowden. They understand this perfectly well and are silent because they are scared. Let me remind you that this concerns not just one country but the entire planet.
Rumânule excepțional, francofon, se aude?! LOL!