Explanation of vote by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia before the voting of the 11th Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly
Mr.President,
Secretary-General,
Colleagues,
Russia requests to put the draft resolution to vote.
We call on you to not support this draft. We realize, however, to what unprecedented pressure our Western partners exposed a great many of countries to make you vote as they wanted. It was not even pressure, but rather straight-up cynical threats, we are aware of that.
This document will not help put an end to armed action. On the contrary, it might encourage Kievan radicals and nationalists to further define the policy of Ukraine at any cost and keep holding peaceful population as hostages. This is not a figure of speech; this is what is happening in a number of large cities in Ukraine, where population is used as a human shield. As reported today, Ukrainian Armed Forced do not let civilians out of Mariupol, keeping them, including women and children, in one of local schools. They force back all those who try to leave the city via the established humanitarian corridors. We are also aware of armed provocations involving civilians that nationalist battalions plot with a view to blame it on Russian troops.
Counter to the norms of the international humanitarian law, military hardware, multiple rocket launchers and artillery equipment are set up in residential areas. Today we will bring such examples to the notice of UN leadership who previously said that they had no such evidence, even though such video footage made by ordinary Ukrainians is easily available on the Internet. Responsibility for this, as well as for criminal uncontrolled distribution of weapons to anyone willing to (including criminals who have been released from prisons) fully rests with Ukrainian authorities. This already caused mass cases of robberies, murders, and plundering.
Colleagues,
Your refusal to support this draft would mean a voice in favor of a peaceful Ukraine, free from radicalism and neo-Nazism, that lives at peace with its neighbors and has rejected external management. Those are the real goals of our special military operation, which the authors of the resolution try to present as aggression.
Ukrainian Ambassador spoke about Nazism today, but he kept shamefully silent about the outrage of Nazism in Ukraine, about the rampage of Nazi and neo-Nazi radical organizations, about torch processions and praising of Hitler’s accomplices.
Those who ever looked into history of the Ukrainian crises, understand its genesis perfectly well. By our actions, we first of all sought to stop the war of the Maidan regime on the people of Donbas that lasted for 8 years. Over that time, our country did everything possible and impossible to avoid this scenario. Using the words of the Secretary-General, we left no stone unturned and knocked on every door, but were not heeded. The people on Donbas were and still are bombarded, and 14,000 deaths does not seem to be the limit. The overwhelming majority of these victims were the people of DPR and LPR.
The goals of our special operation that was started under Article 51 of the UN Charter, are being pursued and will be achieved. We do not target civil facilities and civilians. Please do not trust the huge amount of fakes on that matter that are spread on the Internet. Those fakes were “cooked like hot cakes” in the information center called “Special Operations Forces”. This center was destroyed yesterday. Peaceful scenario for Ukraine can be expedited if radicals start caring for the lives of their fellow citizens and stop hiding behind them. The draft under our consideration today contains no such call.
Nor does it mention the illegal coup in Kiev in 2014, when a legitimately elected president was overthrown with connivance of Germany, France, and Poland, and with support of the United States. The draft resolution does not mention that the new nationalist authorities limited the usage of the Russian language, which gave a start to a sequence of violations of fundamental rights of the people of eastern Ukraine, and not only eastern for that matter, including the core right – the right to life.
Many of you would not hear anything about the tragedy that started after the Maidan coup in 2014, about those who were burnt alive in Odessa, about persecutions and murders of the dissidents. The brightest manifestation of that tragedy was Kiev’s war on Donbas.
This document does not say a word about how the United States and Europe have been pumping up Ukraine with weapons for 8 years, helping the Maidan regime kill people in Donbas; how they justified the loyal Kiev authorities for their complete neglect of the Minsk Agreements and sabotage of UNSC resolution 2202.
Finally, this draft resolution is a clear attempt of those who over the past 10 years committed countless acts of aggression, military operations that were illegal in terms of the international law, and takeovers (one of which was the Maidan coup in Ukraine), to present themselves as guardians of international legitimacy.
Thank you.
