Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Explanation of vote by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia after UNSC procedural vote on inviting a representative of Donbas as a briefer

Mr. President, 

We regret that some delegations were against the briefer that we proposed. This is a manifestation of blatant hypocrisy and double standards, when representatives of Donbas who for 9 years have been suffering from a war that Kiev had started against them are denied the right to address the Security Council on far-fetched pretexts. This confirms again that you do not think of the people of Donbas as human beings and you do not care for their sufferings.  Our Western colleagues are afraid that if the voices of truth make it through to people’s minds, all their efforts to whitewash their proteges in Kiev will go bust. They need to avoid this, so they go for all sorts of procedural tricks, play a petty, unscrupulous game, which, to be frank, looks very unseemly.

I would like to stress that we never went down to such level. When our Western colleagues proposed a speaker at a meeting on Russophobia that we convened, we did not object, although their so-called "briefing" was filled with lies and traditional Western narrative. The briefer made no meaningful contribution to the discussion. What happened today with Daria Morozova gives us reason to think how we are going to consider requests from our colleagues under Rule 39 in the future. Our American colleague said that it is unacceptable to have a briefer representing “unrecognized territories”, and that it violates relevant resolutions. Well, inviting representatives from Kosovo to the Council is a clear violation of UNSC resolution 1244. We will take this principled position of our American colleagues on this matter into account. Otherwise, we will see another portion of double standards on the part of the United States.

We regret that the work of the Security Council once again fell prey to unscrupulous behavior of Western delegations who openly pursue their opportunistic goals.

Thank you.

 

Video of the statement