Press Conference by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia dedicated to the end of the Russian Presidency of UNSC in February 2022
Q: Ambassador, do you feel isolated on the world stage today? And also have you seen the French draft resolution in the Security Council on Ukraine, of course, on the humanitarian situation, and if yes, are you planning to support this? Thank you so much.
A: We don't feel isolated, at least myself. There are a lot of countries that understand what the Russian position is, what Russia is doing and why. We have briefly seen the text of a French draft. It was not formally introduced. I think it will be introduced today by the French Ambassador and then we will see where we go from there.
Q: President Putin started this, describing it as a special military operation in Eastern Ukraine. It's now spread across most of Ukraine. How would you describe what's happening on the ground now? And Michelle Bachelet has said that more than 100 civilians so far have been killed. And yet you're saying the Russian troops are not targeting civilians. How do you feel about defending the Russian military when civilians are being killed?
A: The Russian President said it was a special military operation in Ukraine, not in Donbas. Look, we have to understand what is happening. We have to go back into history that didn't start even in 2014. The Ukrainian authorities started to persecute those who were not…[interrupted by an urgent phone call].
I Just received the information that the US authorities have undertaken another hostile action against the Russian mission to the United Nations, grossly violating their commitments under the host country agreement. They told us they are announcing twelve people (UN diplomats) from the personnel of the Russian mission persona non grata and demanding that they leave by March 7. They just visited the Russian mission and gave us a note prescribing us to do what they demand. You know that with the Secretary-General we raised the issue of arbitrage with the host country, which grossly violates its commitments under the host country agreement. So far it has not been done, but I think it's high time already. This is just hot news that I received right away.
Q: Who are they and who is most senior?
A: I don't know the names yet, but the number is twelve. This is sad news and another demonstration of gross disrespect to the host country agreement, to US commitments within the framework of their obligations, both under the UN Charter, the host country agreement and Vienna conventions.
Q: Can we just ask one more thing? Did they give a reason? What was their reason?
A: I don't know yet. I haven't seen the note. I will give you updates as soon as we have more information.
Coming back to Ukraine. As I said, the conflict has a long history. It didn't start in 2013 or 2014, but 2014 was landmark, a threshold for what was growing and ripening slowly in Ukraine all those years after their independence and resulted in an unconstitutional coup and the war of Ukrainian regime against its own people who protested and who were opposed to what the Maidan regime was trying to implement.
For eight years, we've been trying, unfortunately in vain, to make Ukrainian authorities comply with the Minsk Agreements, and we went out of the way to do so. But from day one, after 2015 in particular, the Ukrainian authorities opted to sabotage first and then simply to deny, abandon, and cancel their commitments under the Minsk Agreements. Before that, they were trying to navigate, so to stay, within the Minsk Agreements, trying to make them the way which suited them. But then it became obvious - nothing works. And then in January-February 2022, when the West started to beef up Ukrainian state with lethal weapons, when Ukrainian authorities amassed 120,000 servicemen at the border of the contact-line with Donbas, and when they upscaled their provocations against Donbas shelling and killing people again, we realized that that was leading us nowhere.
And that's why President Putin took the decision to recognize Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and offer them military assistance within the treaty that we concluded. That's why we launched this military operation in Donbas and in Ukraine, which, as I said today in the General Assembly, was not the war started by us. This is the end of war that was started by Ukraine. As you all know, we said many times that we were not planning military operations in Donbas unless Ukrainian authorities and Ukrainian military directly threatened those republics, which was the case. And we have credible information that the military operation was planned, and that was a move that was inevitable in the circumstances.
Q: There have been some reports out of the border meeting in Belarus between Russia and Ukraine. What is it, in your view, that would bring peace to Ukraine and withdrawal of Russian forces? What is that? And then a little follow-up to. Country after country are coming to the General Assembly podium and supporting Ukraine, feeling that Russia is the aggressor. What is your view of that, if not isolation? Thank you so much.
A: What will bring peace to Ukraine? As we said, that is demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, which creates a clear and immediate danger to us, also within the context of geopolitical stability, As President Putin said, if not today or tomorrow, one day in 30 or 50 years, Ukraine might and will perhaps become a NATO member that will move NATO to the Russian border, and that will be an existential threat for us. That is something that we will not allow to happen.
On the talks that were held on the border of Ukraine and Belarus, they finished at this stage. The details of that are not known to me, but I know that there was a decision to continue those talks. When and where I do not know yet, perhaps in the same place. What I know is that today President Putin spoke to President Macron and he listed those conditions that we demand from Ukrainians. They are well known: demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine; commitment to its neutral status, to not joining NATO and not moving weapons to our bodies.
I did not answer one question regarding the reports about 100 civilians dead. There are a lot of reports today, and I said that there are a lot of fake news. There are a lot of “fake factories” that produce those news. We do not have credible reports on civilian casualties. Of course, war is a bad thing and anything can happen. But it is difficult to consider those reports credible, since we are witnessing and encountering a massive propaganda campaign using, as I said, “troll factories”, that produce those news to which we referred to in our recent statements on numerous occasions.
Q: So you just referred to this as a war. This is now war?
A: This is a special military operation. War is how it is commonly called, but I wouldn't call it so because war means outright hostilities. But as you know, we announced it and we maintain it that we're only targeting military facilities in Ukraine. We do not target any civilian infrastructure or cities, as they report.
Q: Can you talk about your relationship with the Secretary-General? We saw you in the General Assembly on Wednesday. You had a very animated discussion. We couldn't read lips, but we certainly saw the body language. There's been a lot of criticism, and the UN argues that essentially all he's doing is defending the UN Charter that says States must settle their disputes through peaceful means, which is not happening here. So that's one issue. What should the Secretary-General do in this instance? And in addition to that, this notion of the denazification of Ukraine. Ukraine has a Jewish President, so it’s just beggars belief that you are talking about Nazis in removing Nazis in Ukraine when the President himself is a Jew.
A: There was criticism on our part of the Secretary-General for the position he took on the crisis. I do not recall, as I said to him directly and out loud that he took similar positions in similar cases. And there were many – take Syria or other examples. There were many where his position was much more subdued. However, there was no body language. Rest assured that it was criticism within the diplomatic protocol, which I think I didn't overstep.
On the fact that Zelensky has Jewish heritage. It doesn't matter because real power in Ukraine, real political weight belongs to the radicals and neo-Nazis who defy the President, who have their own agenda, who ruled the ball in Ukraine. President Zelensky came with a landslide victory of 74% of the population, promising to end the war as the first thing on the list of his priorities. But then he was slowly backing off this and he finished practically playing into the hands of those radicals and neo-Nazi organizations which claim to represent the patriotic part of the Ukrainian society. He demonstrated that he's weak, and that in the circumstances that he found himself in he had no political will to resist those radicals who are the main political driving force in today's Ukraine.
Q: A follow-up on Russia's calling it an existential threat if Ukraine were to join NATO. Russia is already neighboring NATO countries. So why would Ukraine becoming another NATO country make it more of an existential threat than it already is in your eyes? And secondly, there has been a lot of talk by European leaders about how Russia's invasion, aggression on Ukraine is going to change the European security architecture, not just today, but for decades to come. I wonder if you could comment on your reaction to that.
A: Yes, we are neighboring NATO countries and that was the result of cheating by our Western partners who, at the time when the Berlin Wall collapsed and Germany reunified, were telling us that they would not move beyond the borders of the former GDR. And our naive leadership at that time, M.Gorbachev and E.Shevarnadze, opted to believe them about it. Now Western partners are imminently denying that there was any of such, I wouldn't call it even commitments or pledges, any such promises. But documents were revealed that tell us it was the case. The naive Soviet leadership believed in it, and now we are ripening the fruit of this naivete and having NATO countries at our borders.
We know that the NATO infrastructure is moving towards the Russian borders as we speak, that they are conducting exercises right on the border of the Russian Federation. We've been offering NATO to come to an agreement to move our troops, even for the exercises, at a certain distance, so that not to provoke each other. We addressed that appeal to NATO a long time ago, but they never reacted. I remember the last conversation between Lavrov and Stoltenberg here in New York at the high-level segment of the General Assembly in 2021. Minister Lavrov repeatedly reminded about that issue. But Secretary-General Stoltenberg was evading the question. He was simply evading the question as NATO did and all the countries did. So the presence of NATO infrastructure around and in close proximity to our borders is a geopolitical threat to us.
That's why we offered to the US and NATO to engage in a serious dialogue on security guarantees. That offer was made as recently as, I think, October - November last year. We sent our proposals in that regard which included non-expansion of NATO, non-placement of weapons close to our borders, and moving NATO back to where it was in 1997, which would be a fair solution and would bring us to the state of the security architecture which would be beneficial for all the participants. But we received a reply which basically denied all our ideas in that regard. We were told that any country has a right to choose their allies freely, of course, meaning Ukraine. But as we said, they are forgetting about another thing to which they committed at OSCE summits -- the indivisibility of security, which means that security of one country cannot be reached at the expense of the security of others. And that was a commitment, not just a paragraph in a joint statement.
Next is your question about Russian invasion changing European security architecture. I think NATO has changed European security architecture already, back after 1997 when it started to expand to the East, contrary to their promises, which unfortunately were not their commitments.
Q: The war is costing more and more civilian lives today. You have bombed Kharkiv and there have been several explosions in Kiev. What are you doing to prevent civilian casualties during your war on Ukraine?
A: I already said that the reports that are dubbed credible may not be credible at all. We have regular briefings by our Ministry of Defense which maintains that we are not targeting civilian objects in Ukraine, nor the cities as such. So these reports about bombing of Kharkiv or explosions in Kiev should be verified, which we strongly doubt, given the number of fakes that are spreading these days about the issue. If there are any explosions, these are in the suburbs of Kiev and they refer to the military infrastructure that the Russian armed forces are targeting.
Q: We have reporters on ground reporting that there are Russian bombings in Kiev.
A: In Kiev? I don't have this information. We saw some footages of buildings partly destroyed but it was then said and confirmed by our military that was not our missiles but either a plane of Ukraine or a wrong missile that went into the building. We didn't bomb residential areas of Kiev.
Q: So you say this is a military operation not a war. When and how do you end this operation and is there a scenario where you would use nuclear weapons?
A: How do we end the operation? I said what President Putin said on it. As soon as we have understanding from the Ukrainian authorities that they are prepared to demilitarize and denazify, if I may use that kind of verb in English, that will be a step towards the end of it.
On the use of nuclear weapons, God forbid it. But President Putin ordered to put our nuclear force on high alert because we saw some disturbing statements from NATO leaders in that regard in relation to Russia. So that is the kind of deterrence that we exercise.
Q: We noticed recently that Kuwait supported the draft resolution condemning Russia. Lebanon condemned Russia, but the UAE abstained on that very draft resolution and the UAE is just taking up the Presidency of the Security Council. What do you expect from UAE and the Arab countries regarding this crisis and is Russia going to respond to the latest step by the US by expelling twelve diplomats? Thank you.
A: We expect that the UAE will uphold the integrity of the office of the SC Presidency and that it will conduct it in a smooth way. We know that the UAE has a strong diplomatic school. We know their staff, and I'm sure that they will do it, hopefully, with flying colors in the present circumstances.
As for the second question. I'm sure that the response will follow because it's a diplomatic practice which provides for a tit-for-tat. It's not our choice. We didn't initiate it and I think that the answer will be given but it's not for me to decide.
Q: Ambassador, are the visas of diplomats who are being expelled coming to and end? Are their visas running out and they have to leave anyway?
A: We have many diplomats in the Mission who do not have visa extensions. They can stay in the US and continue their job, and they can leave the country, but in this case that's 100% guaranteed that they will not be able to come back because they will not get their visa extensions. Who of those twelve have valid us visas today and who don't, I have no idea yet, because I didn't see the names.
