Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing on UN-EU Cooperation
Main statement:
Madam President,
Today's debate on UN-EU cooperation and its role in international efforts to ensure peace and security is taking place in a special environment. The European Union was originally designed as an economic project to prevent a new war in Europe through the cooperation of former opponents and enemies, but what we’ve observed lately is nothing but its degradation into a political entity seeking to sow discord on our continent and trigger this very war. And by the beginning of 2025, this process has almost completed and the degradation has reached its bottom. The once sensible integration club used to promote cooperation projects with Russia, but now it has morphed into an ossified and aggressive Russophobic bloc that staked its energy, economic, social and financial well-being on a pointless confrontation with its eastern neighbor. Today it is clear more than ever that the EU is rapidly losing in this confrontation.
Today we can also clearly point out all of the key miscalculations of the EU capital, Brussels, which generated this dire (for the EU) situation. In particular, I’d like to refer to the latest large-scale EU enlargement of 2004, when, for political reasons, membership was granted to some states that did not fully meet the membership criteria established by the EU itself. As a result, the EU got the Poles, the Balts and some other states totally addicted to the idea of historical revanchism. And these newly-backed Europeans took their Russophobic “bats in the belfry” with them to the EU.
After more than 20 years, we regret to state that these “bats” have multiplied and settled in the minds of even those who during the last decades had no “Russophobia addiction” whatsoever, and even advocated the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia. This process was slow, but the negative changes became increasingly noticeable. Thus, in 2008, the Eastern Partnership embraced a policy aimed at cutting mutually beneficial ties between Russia and its neighbors and reorienting Russia’s neighbors towards the EU. The main victim hear was Ukraine, where the West consistently implemented its “anti-Russia” project, cultivating and promoting there contempt for all things Russian as if they were the only source of danger to the future of this State. The Ukrainian elite was compelled into unprofitable economic deals, which were geared towards a full disruption of the common economic space and any good-neighborly relations with Russia.
Six years on, these efforts reached the apex with the 2014 anti-constitutional coup in Kiev, which was produced and orchestrated by three European Union countries – France, Germany and Poland. These countries failed to deliver on the promises and guarantees they themselves had given to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, nor did they insist on the radical opposition's implementing the agreements reached with their help.
Well, everybody knows what happened then. The nationalists who came to power launched a genuine war of extermination against the peaceful Russian-speaking inhabitants of Donbass, thus causing an intra-Ukrainian armed conflict. It could have been stopped by the Minsk agreements brokered by two EU members, Germany and France. However, as we now know very well from the avowals of the former leaders of these States, the Kiev regime had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements whatsoever, while Berlin and Paris, instead of pressuring Kiev to do so, used the Minsk process solely as a “smokescreen” to arm Ukraine and prepare it for war with Russia. The massacre of the Russian-speaking population, which claimed the lives of over 10,000 people, did not stop – more like it had significantly intensified by February 2022, which was precisely what forced us to launch our special military operation.
After that, the EU’s Russophobia just went through the roof. The EU refused cheap Russian energy, while acting in the manner “I'll freeze off my ears to spite grandma”; it “swallowed” without protest the Nord Stream explosions, and plunged its own economy into a deep crisis by imposing sanctions on Russia, which ended up harming the EU itself. The EU began banning Russian culture taking things up to absurd extremes – for instance, calling Russian artists Ukrainian artists – and went to great pains only to fund the war in Ukraine in the futile hope that the Zelensky regime would succeed in defeating Russia militarily.
And when the new US President proclaimed Washington's new policy towards a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, the EU became an apologist for war, hitting the bottom of its degradation. And today it spares no effort to thwart the US-Russian dialogue on Ukraine. We don’t need to look further than the recent statement by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen: “Peace in Ukraine may be more dangerous than ongoing war.” No need to comment on that.
Madam President,
Some countries today lament the fact that we have no dialogue with Europe. Indeed, Russia has had no dialogue with the EU for a long time, but this is not because we suspended such dialogue – it is the EU countries that did it; and today there is simply almost no one of sound mind left in Europe, who we could talk to. Today's meeting illustrates this perfectly well – as a briefer, we had today an outspoken Russophobe Ms. Kaya Kallas, new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She is well known in Russia; we remember what she said when she was Prime Minister of Estonia: “Russia's defeat is not a bad thing” and “it is not a bad thing if the big power is actually [made] much smaller.”
In her new role, fantasizing about NATO membership for “the strongest army in Europe” (which is how she described the Ukrainian army), she had the audacity to assert that “Russian citizens are not dying in the conflict,” displaying at the same time the flag of a Ukrainian Marine Brigade responsible for countless crimes and killings of civilians in Kursk Oblast.
How can such immoral assertions be treated in my country given that last year alone the number of civilians in Russia who suffered from the Ukrainian armed forces amounted to almost 5.5 thousand people, 809 of whom were killed? 347 children were among the casualties, and 51 children died. And earlier this year, when the village of Russkoye Porechnoye in Kursk Oblast was liberated, we discovered torture chambers in the basements of residential houses set up by the Ukrainian army. There were found bodies of seven locals, mostly elderly people – they had been tortured to death by the Ukrainian Nazis.
This is not some theatrical performance like Bucha that was staged by the Ukrainian authorities and whereto the Kiev princeling takes Western guests on guided tours; these are real crimes. We have repeatedly exposed such cases both in the Security Council and on other international platforms. Just the other day in that same village several more bodies were found – people died in a similar way. In the coming days this mournful list is likely to become significantly longer, because the Ukrainian army today is fleeing Kursk Oblast like a bat out of hell suffering huge losses, and the area of the liberated territories extends already tens of square kilometers. Just today, Russia experienced the largest attack by Ukrainian drones, which affected Moscow and the Moscow region. 337 drones were shot down; 91 of them were above Moscow. People were killed and injured. Incidentally, this attack coincided with the visit to Moscow of OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioğlu. Apparently, the Kiev regime wanted to demonstrate to him its true terrorist colors. Ukrainian drones were aimed at civilian objects. We have repeatedly emphasized that the Russian Armed Forces are striking exclusively military targets or targets related to the Ukrainian military-industrial complex. We are not targeting residential areas or social infrastructure, unlike the Ukrainian deliberate attacks on civilian sites in Russia.
Colleagues, how are we supposed to talk to such characters who have bitterly hated Russia for many years on? After all, even before her appointment as EU High Representative, Ms. Kallas was directly involved in a years-long campaign aimed at squeezing out the Russian language from Estonia, even though Russian remains the mother tongue of a significant number of its inhabitants. As a result, about 5% of Estonians are “non-citizens” (however, this status is likely to be canceled soon); and almost all opportunities to get education in Russian have been eliminated. Estonia has been actively fighting dissent and the Estonian Orthodox Church. Nazis are openly strolling the streets, and monuments to Hitler's accomplices are being erected in the country.
In a word, when she comes to Ukraine or communicates with representatives of the Zelensky regime, Ms. Callas actually finds herself in an ideologically friendly environment. Of course, she is not bothered by the violations of the rights of the Russian-speaking population, nor by the tens of thousands of political prisoners, the lack of political freedoms, draconian censorship and the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. She is not bothered, because she sees just the same at home, in Estonia. And that is why she finds it absolutely normal to violate the rights of Russians and kill them. Can you imagine even a hypothetical dialogue between Russia and the EU, if the EU is represented by politicians with such convictions? And it is the EU where a frontrunner in the elections can be easily removed from the presidential race without any convincing accusations, as was the case in Romania.
Colleagues,
In conclusion, in light of the above, I would like to urge you to think long and hard about whether the UN needs to engage in dialogue with such an entity, which itself is flagrantly violating human rights and is strongly associated around the world with the aggressive imposition of neoliberal approaches and the pontificating on human rights, which goes hand-in-hand with their neo-colonial practices, and efforts to cultivate pocket dictatorships and impose harsh sanctions against all dissenting. This approach does not and cannot have anything to do with the UN efforts and the principles that guide its cooperation with regional organizations as per Chapter VIII of the Charter. It is not surprising that countries of the Global South, instead of aligning themselves with European so-called “rules”, are increasingly opting for non-coercive alliances on an equal footing, such as BRICS and the SCO.
As regards Russia, we stand ready to partake in mutually respectful dialogue with those European countries that are not guided by the paradigms of various – I beg your pardon – “kallases” and “von der leyens”. And we stand ready to cooperate with those States that pursue their national priorities and are seeking to establish a lasting and sustainable peace on the European continent based on respect for the positions and interests of all States, including Russia. And the more states we have in Europe that do not share the Russophobic beliefs of Ms. Kallass and the like, the more chances our common continent will have for peaceful and progressive development.
Thank you.
Right of reply:
I was not going to take the floor, although I could have taken the floor on a point of order.
First, I do not recall anyone asking Ms. Kallas any questions that she had to answer. Secondly, I think you know, as President of the Council (and if you don’t, let me remind you) that a UNSC briefing is not supposed to be an interactive dialogue with the briefers. At least, I do not recall that such practice ever existed. But what I do I recall is that your colleagues from the EU tried to interrupt the briefers who were asked questions and wanted to give answers, but were not given the opportunity to do so.
It's common practice that open meetings of the Security Council do not imply any dialogue with the briefers. The briefers are supposed to speak, to listen to what they hear, and if they disagree with anything that delegations are saying, they can turn to the media and voice their views there.
But I do not want to get into a polemic with Ms. Kallas now – I’ve said everything that I wanted to say in my statement. But I would like to address you, Madam President, as you have reproached us with allegedly inappropriate remarks. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Ms. Kallas represents the European Union here, and when we spoke and mentioned her name, we did not speak of her as a person, but we spoke of her as a representative of the European Union, quoting what she said, straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.
You consider our remarks inappropriate? – well, we deem your reproaches inappropriate.
I thank you.
