Statement by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy at UNSC briefing on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine
Mme.President,
We have taken notice of the opinions presented by Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements and IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino.
Your statements contained many worrisome conclusions and scary statistics. In this context, we must say that Russia faced the consequences of degrading situation in Ukraine right after the unconstitutional coup of February 2014. As soon as the nationalist authorities showed their true face by starting a crackdown on the Russian language and physical extermination of population of Eastern Ukraine, Russia saw an influx of refugees escaping from the lawlessness of Maidan. By official data, at least 1.7 million people filed requests for Russian citizenship, refugee status, or temporary asylum in our country starting from 2014. Once the Ukrainian side intensified the shelling of Donbas before the beginning of the Russian special military operation, this refugee flow grew larger and amounted to 863 thousand people. It means that since the Maidan coup, the total of at least 2.5 million Ukrainians have found shelter in Russia.
By the way, mass outflow of Ukrainians from their homeland is not a new phenomenon for that country. As reported by Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, the population of Ukraine dropped by one quarter (from 54 down to 41 million people) in 1990-2021 period. According to the Ukrainian Institute for Demography, the total number of Ukrainians in Ukraine was even lower in 2021 – only 38 million people. Remarkably, the share of Ukrainians migrating for seasonal jobs stood at 3 million people, as reported by the same source.
I do not spill this statistics to downplay the scale of migration challenges that Ukraine and its neighbors are facing today. But I do this to show our objection to attempts to “zero out” the history of post-Soviet Ukraine, turn a blind eye to all its problems, and start counting them from the moment Russia commenced its military operation. Today, our Western colleagues do not like to recall the devastating tempo of out-migration from Ukraine that I mentioned and that gained momentum in recent years. But beside that, they would rather ignore the alarming level of corruption and the skyrocketing number of politically-motivated murders, most of which remained unpunished, unprecedented persecution of opposition leaders, mass closures of opposition Media.
Those who blame us for violating human rights, would rather not speak of an unprecedented crackdown on the Russian language and its speakers. Of course, narrative that praises Ukraine would hardly welcome a mentioning of website “MIROTVORETS” (peacemaker) that is still functional, publishing in the public domain personal data of untrustworthy Ukrainians and foreigners who dare to criticize the Maidan regime, among them even minors, whose lives are put at risk. None of our Western colleagues ever gave any assessment to this disgraceful phenomenon.
Mme.President,
In your “picture of the world”, Ukraine is an innocent white lamb. However, the 8-year-long war of the Kiev regime on the peaceful population of Eastern Ukraine, as well as lasting sabotage of the Minsk Agreements do not fit into this picture. And since it all does not fit, you simply try to forget it and make others forget, threatening them with sanctions, using direct political and economic blackmail.
According to your baseless assertions, what happened on 24 February was Russia's “unprovoked and unprecedented aggression” or a “war of choice”. By claiming so, you hypocritically pretend that the world has not seen anything as atrocious since the end of Word War II. But you eagerly sweep under the carpet the fact that military adventures of Western states in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and this already happened after the end of the Cold War. As recently as yesterday our Syrian colleagues circulated a letter about the disastrous consequences of the ruining of Syrian Raqqa by US forces back in 2017. The operation in Raqqa has become a generic term used to characterize an inhumane campaign resulting in almost complete obliteration of a city and its residents.
You are trying to rewrite the modern history in an anti-Russian manner, and you also connive at craziest speculations of some our Eastern European colleagues regarding the role of the USSR in liberating Europe and the whole world from fascism. Apparently, this makes it easier for you to not notice blatant manifestations of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which makes denazification of this country one of the goals of our special military operation. This must be done so that no threat either to the people of Donetsk and Lugansk, or to Russia, ever comes from the territory of Ukraine. Apart from that, this must be done for Ukrainians who have become hostages to their authorities.
Mme.President,
The way our Western colleagues care for Ukraine and Ukrainians is full of egoism and opportunistic considerations. You only need them as “cannon fodder” in your proxy war against Russia that should proceed “to the very last Ukrainian”. You never dismiss your self-interest. Thus, Western arms manufacturers rub their hands with excitement calculating profit from increased demand on military produce. One week into the hostilities in Ukraine, stock value of BAE SYSТEMS, Britain's number one arms company, increased by 24 %. Stocks of THALES, manufacturer of anti-tank and air defense systems, grew by 42 %. American war industry demonstrates similar trends.
NATO’s Eastern European members also seem satisfied. They no longer have to think how to get rid of obsolete Soviet-era weapons. While promising to deliver to Ukraine brand new NATO-grade equipment, they readily dispatch specimens that often fail to either shoot or move, knowing that Russian forces would “grind” this scrap metal, saving them trouble with disposal.
Following up on that, our pragmatic American colleagues keep seeking maximum economic benefits without a twinge of conscience. While prompting Europeans to adopt increasingly tough economic sanctions, Washington (that is least affected by this scenario), intends to make them depend on American LNG. Yes, it is way more expensive that Russian LNG, so what? It is “molecules of freedom”, as one of US Secretaries put it, the molecules that Europeans will have to pay for, not Americans.
It is well-known that Russian economy is coping with sanctions-related pressure successfully. We keep finding new opportunities for development and engagement with new reliable partners. The only country that is losing in every sense and dimension is Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev however seem to not notice that, or pretend to not notice for that matter.
But ordinary Ukrainians seem to become more cognizant of the fact, because since the special military operation started, they have not been terrorized or shelled at by the Russian military – no matter how hard Ukrainian and Western propaganda makers would try to make this point. What they did see was unfathomable cruelty and indifference to the population demonstrated by Ukrainian neo-Nazis and radicals who only cared for saving their own hide. Evidence of using civilians as a human shield, indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian residential quarters and subsequent attempts to have Russia blamed for that, blatant Goebbels-style provocations like those with Bucha, Kramatorsk, maternity hospital and drama theatre in Mariupol tick upward by the day. The truth about it is impossible to conceal, as well as the facts of Ukrainian armed forces using banned cluster munitions against civilian infrastructure. For example, this morning the village of Golovchino of the Belgorod region of Russia was targeted with cluster munitions, though there were no military facilities there. This was put on record, all evidence is in place. But for some reason, we do not see any eagerness of our Western colleagues to condemn this heinous crime and a violation of the norms of international humanitarian law by radicals.
One month into the siege of Azovstal plant, those same radicals and neo-Nazis suddenly declared that allegedly, there had been civilians inside the plant all that time, even though until yesterday, they had never uttered a word about it. They did not mention any civilians even when hundreds of them, once surrounded, were giving in and laying down arms. So they exposed themselves once again: the only way civilians could get inside the Azovstal was for them being kept as a human shield.
There is abundant evidence to this end that we will surely share with you. But will you want to hear or see it? We do doubt it in light of the fact that you spent 8 years ignoring civilians – women, children, and elderly – die in Donbas. Anyway, seeking your support and understanding is not among the goals of our special military operation. It would be naïve to count on that amidst the geopolitical struggle that you initiated – the struggle where Ukraine is doomed to be but a pawn.
Lately, we could see again what unscrupulous methods you resort to when building your “rules-based order”. We discovered evidence that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, instead of monitoring and recording all ceasefire violations, actually spied in Kiev’s interests. The SMM shared feed from surveillance cameras with Ukrainians so they could do fire adjustment. We continue collecting evidence on this unflattering incident.
There is one more episode that deserves a separate assessment. I am speaking about Ukrainian armed formations using OSCE armored vehicles. According to media reports, Azov militants turned up at the SMM office in Mariupol at the end of February demanding keys to Mission’s vehicles. When rejected, they threatened to shoot the SMM staff. Ultimately, they took over eight vehicles with OSCE insignia, including armored ones. One of such cars was later discovered 5 km away from the SMM Office in the vicinity of Mariupol’s Kirov Market. It showed signs of hostilities. None of those vehicles was turned back to the OSCE. SMM staff in Severodonetsk also received such threats in late February-early March. OSCE leadership was aware of the problem, but chose to silence down this fact as long as possible.
Such exposures undermine all trust in international organizations, where majority of officials come from Western states. Against this backdrop, calls to peace and ceasefire are perceived as two-tongued and disingenuous. In practical terms, they only mean willingness to give a short break to Ukrainian nationalists and radicals, carve some time for them to re-group, receive new shipments of drones, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), and in the meantime carry out more infernal provocations, launch more fakes about the actions of Russian soldiers. We will carefully distinguish between such tactical “pseudo-peacemaking” calls and truthful desire to help Ukraine make the only right and long due decisions.
The quicker Ukraine does this, contrary to the encouraging mantras of those willing to profiteer from its tragedy that started back in 2014 (including the leadership of the European Union, fully unmasked by this moment), the better for it. Because one way or the other, goals of the special military operation on the liberation of Donbas, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and elimination of threats it poses to Russia will be achieved.
Thank you.
