Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on Western Arms Supplies to Ukraine
Madam President,
We thank the representative of European civil society George Szamuely, for his sobering report on what is actually happening around Western arms supplies to the Kiev regime and on what triggered the current conflict, which is not a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but rather a conflict between Russia and the West, or – more specifically – between Russia, the United States and NATO. We can supplement his report with a phrase from yesterday's interview of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico: “In Europe, the word ‘peace’ is no longer used, it simply does not exist. Anyone who talks about peace is considered a warmonger. And anyone who talks about war is deemed to be fighting for peace.”
This is the Orwellian reality, which the Western states are living in; and they decided to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia by the hands of the Kiev regime. Their plans turned to be a fiasco, which makes the head of the Kiev junta increasingly nervous. For fear that he and his entourage will soon be “thrown under the bus”, Zelensky even decided to start blackmailing the whole world saying that Ukraine might get nuclear weapon – we discussed this issue in detail on October 21. Yet, our Western colleagues did not say a word about that. Another option for him is to embark on reckless military adventures, as one in the Kursk region, where the Ukrainian armed forces have already lost more than 25,000 people since the beginning of hostilities, and these were the best-trained reserves.
Neither Kiev nor Washington, London, or Brussels can come up with any effective “plan B”, “plan C,” etc., which could change the catastrophic situation for the Ukrainian army on the frontline. It is obvious that without the direct involvement of the West in the war with a nuclear power – which the “expired” Ukrainian president seeks so ardently– Ukrainian troops will continue to retreat and sustain catastrophic losses.
This is clearly evidenced by the facts we receive from the frontline, where the Russian Army is successfully progressing with its offensive campaign in key areas. Even Western military experts cannot deny this; according to the data they provide, we have liberated 478 km2 of territory in October alone, and by the end of the month, we’ve liberated as much as 30 km2 per day. In just a few last days, the Russian military has liberated such large and strategically important towns as Gornyak, Selidovo, Katerinovka, Dobrovolye, Bogoyavlenka, Izmailovka, Alexandropol, Shakhterskoe and Vishnevoye. For comparison, during their much-hyped “counter-offensive” in 2023, the Ukrainian armed forces managed to capture only 250 km2 – we’ve already liberated these territories, by the way. Thus, during the whole of 2023 Ukraine captured twice as little territory as we tend to liberate in one month.
The Ukrainian authorities by hook or by crook are trying to hide the truth from their people and their Western sponsors. Thus, as we learned yesterday, the Ukrainian servicemen were ordered to use in their conversations with journalists only such words as “victory”, “we are moving forward” and “pushing out the enemy”, and, conversely, not to use such words as “retreat” or “the enemy has broken through our defenses”. On top of that, in such cases the propagandist of the Kiev regime quickly change the tune and start claiming that the lost cities have “no strategic importance” or are “heavily subsidized”. Well, Kurakhovo, Kurakhovskoye, Toretsk, Pokrovsk and, indeed, the whole of Donbass remaining under the control of the Ukrainian armed forces risk to become such in the near future.
However, the West continues by inertia to supply the Kiev regime with military equipment, including artillery, drones and tanks. Among other things, they do that in order to give their defense companies a chance to get profit, as well as to dispose of old military equipment. Of course, the Western patrons of the Kiev junta do not forget to line their own pockets. Thus, the Pentagon recently conducted an audit of $2.1 billion sent to Ukraine from January to December 2022. And it turned out that $1.1 billion were undocumented, and nothing could justify and verify the payments. I do believe that journalistic investigation into corruption that goes hand in hand with Ukrainian military supplies is yet to be seen.
However, even Washington and its allies are beginning to realize that it is not the lack of weapons and ammunition that undermines the Zelensky regime. The main reason for the Ukrainian forces falling back in the frontline is that people simply no longer trust the former actor, who lost all legitimacy back in May. Zelensky campaigned using slogans about peace with Russia, equal rights for Russian speaking residents, and protection of the Orthodox faith, and that is why people voted for him.
However, after that, in order to please Western geopolitical interests, he chose the opposite path and finally turned his country into a “pawn” in the game against Russia. He did hope that with the help of the United States he would become a “queen” on the grand chessboard. This is a treacherous path vis-à-vis the Ukrainian people, and on this path, he sold off fertile lands and strategic enterprises to Western corporations for nothing. And this process is still ongoing. As we found out from the classified annexes of the so-called “Zelensky peace plan”, Ukraine is ready to allow the West to use strategic resources of Ukraine – uranium, titanium, lithium and graphite. Perhaps, these annexes are classified, because, according to Article 13 of the Ukrainian Constitution, subsoil resources belong not to the Government, but to the people of Ukraine, and alienation of these resources in favor of foreign companies would require a referendum as a bare minimum.
I would like to remind you that the United States has long had its eye on these deposits. For example, Senator Lindsey Graham suggested that the US could provide assistance to Kiev in exchange for access to the minerals, which he valued at 10-12 trillion dollars. Other sponsors of the Kiev regime are also insisting on selling off all of Ukraine’s assets. For example, a Regulation adopted by the EU Council on providing a loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets, contains a condition for transferring control over the Ukrainian military-industrial complex to Brussels.
Realizing that the current Ukrainian leader is acting in the best traditions of a number of Ukrainian hetmans (who were real traitors to their country), an increasing number of Ukrainians are starting to turn away from Zelensky, and they do it en masse. As a result, the Ukrainian Army is experiencing a catastrophic shortage of personnel, and there are no more volunteers in Ukrainian draft offices.
In order to solve the problem, the Kiev regime is trying every trick in the book, inventing ever more sophisticated methods to get the hands on new recruits. Kiev urgently needs to plug holes in the frontline. Therefore, young men now are not only being grabbed on the streets and in public transport in small towns, but also at concerts and restaurants in Kiev, where previously they used to lead a quiet life without fear of being snatched by draft officers and then sent to the frontline after a few days of quite formal training. The hunt for men is very harsh and is not regulated by law. Thus, according to the data leaks we can find on the Internet, more than 100 people died at the hands of draft officers during the forced conscription in Ukraine – in the best tradition of Nazi “polizei”. However, no one was detained or punished, and the information about these cases was simply hushed up.
Yet, there is still not enough “cannon fodder” in the frontline, and we hear more and more calls (including at the behest of Kiev's Western mentors) to lower the conscription age to 18-21 years. In such circumstances, many people are hiding at home, evading conscription or fleeing the country. The Internet is full of videos showing Ukrainian men who have managed across the border and are congratulating each other on their escape from the “concentration camp”. Quite a few of them choose Russia – in one year alone, from February 2022 to February 2023, 5.3 million Ukrainian refugees arrived in Russia. Now there are many more of them in our country. Moreover, many Ukrainians who left for the West tend to face problems there, humiliation and discrimination on the basis of language; therefore, they may opt for moving not only to Russia, but also to the regions that have become part of Russia as a result of referendums in the fall of 2022. They are doing that en masse, and that’s what drives Zelensky and his clique over the edge.
Those Ukrainian men who fail to flee and are forcibly thrown to the frontline prefer to either surrender immediately or desert. Thus, according to the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine, in the first eight months of 2024, almost 30,000 cases were opened following the incidents of soldiers going AWOL, while back in 2022 there were 6.5 thousand such cases. Experts estimate that the total number of deserters ranges from 100 to 170 thousand people. The whole of Ukraine has been soothingly discussed this mayhem surrounding the country’s conscription. And it is only Kiev’s Western sponsors who are trying to turn a blind eye to these deadly developments in the country, convincing the head of the Kiev regime to throw more and more unfortunate people to the frontline.
Ukrainian PoWs have said that completely unmotivated Ukrainian recruits are blocked from immediately deserting from the front line by motivated nationalists and neo-Nazis who are basically acting as barrier troops – they stand in the rear of their units, and shoot them in the back.
Another way to somehow keep up the morale of the Ukrainian units is to staff them with foreign mercenaries. At least 15,000 mercenaries from more than 100 countries have come to Ukraine since the special military operation began. Most of them have already been liquidated, but PMCs of Poland and the United States have been carried out an active recruitment campaign, seeking to get new "cannon fodder" to fight for the Zelensky regime. Among those actively involved in this conflict are the following: the American PMCs “Academi”, “Cubic”, “Darkhorse Benefit”, “Dyn Corporation”, “Forward Observation Group”, “Hyperion Services” and “Sons of Liberty International”, as well as the Polish “ASBS Othago” and “European Security Academy”.
It is the mercenaries and nationalists who stand behind the most notorious and appalling crimes and violations of IHL, in particular those committed by Zelensky's bandits and marauders during the Kursk incursion. We have collected irrefutable evidence of the Kiev regime's most egregious crimes against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Russian cities, which we convincingly demonstrated during the informal UNSC Arria Formula meeting last week. Even the American journalists had to admit the fact that in the Kursk region the Ukrainian soldiers targeted civilians who were trying to flee.
Madam President,
Without a doubt, we will not hear anything of the true facts I mentioned above from our Western colleagues. Nor will we hear any comments from them regarding the numerous cases of violations by the Zelensky regime of the Convention on Inhumane Weapons (CCW). We are referring to the fact that Ukrainian formations are deliberately mining roadsides, bridges and areas near residential houses, medical and educational institutions, they are using anti-personnel ‘Butterfly’ (Lepestok) mines and booby traps against civilians, they are mining the bodies of fallen servicemen and civilians. The other day, for example, a video appeared on the Internet showing a Ukrainian soldier stuffing explosives into a child's toy, saying that this toy is to be sent to the Kursk region.
It is, of course, much easier for the West to repeat its hackneyed narrative than to assess the facts of the systematic use by the Ukrainian armed forces of toxic chemicals included in Schedule 2 (BZ) and Schedule 3 (chloropicrin) of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), as well as the use of toxic substances and riot control agents (RCAs) against not only the Russian armed forces but also against the civilian population. The West either hush up these facts or blame Russia for using such chemicals. Thus, at the meeting on October 21, the representative of Slovenia tried to blame Russia for contaminating the Seim River with toxic substances. At the same time, he forgot that as early as September 13, in this very chamber, we warned about the potential discharge of toxic substances into the Seim and Desna rivers from one of Ukraine's military-industrial complex enterprises in the Sumy region.
Madam President,
In conclusion, I would like to recommend that our Western colleagues summon the courage and finally recognize that the course they chosen – fighting Russia using the hands of the Ukrainians – has proved to be a failure. Hopes for inflicting strategic defeat on our country and forecasts about the inevitable collapse of our economy appeared to be unrealistic, no matter how hard the British Permanent Representative tries to prove the opposite, as she did yesterday in this chamber. After all, facts are stubborn things, and they show that the economic and energy crises triggered by the short-sighted economic policies of Washington, London and Brussels have hit Western countries and their citizens the hardest, whereas Russia has managed to withstand many thousands of sanctions.
Our economy is growing. Last year its growth rate was 3.4-3.6 percent, this year it will be around 3.9-4 percent. At the same time, the Eurozone economy is teetering on the brink of recession. We have all heard that one of the largest Germany’s companies “Volkswagen” has announced plans to close at least three of its plants in Germany, which will entail the dismissal of tens of thousands of employees and the pay cut on the remaining staff by 18%. Another famous company “Siemens” announced that investment in Germany is pointless, and the company now intends to invest only in expanding its capacities abroad.
Last week everybody could see how futile the attempts to isolate our country are: Kazan successfully hosted the BRICS Summit, which was attended by the leaders of 36 countries and the heads of six international organizations. And it is they who are now driving the process of finding a just, sustainable and lasting peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis that would be in line with the UN Charter in full (not just with the bits of it related to territorial integrity). And this solution would imply the elimination of the root causes of the conflict, and the development of sustainable and equitable security formulas that would equally take into account the interests of all world players. This would be a truly serious approach, not just attempts to impose some ultimatums on Russia, all these ultimatums are divorced from reality.
I want to warn you right away that there will be no repeat of the scenario with the Minsk agreements; we will not allow any freezing of the conflict so that the Zelensky regime can “lick its wounds”. Neither will Ukraine be accepted to NATO in one form or another. The goals of our special military operation, including the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, remain in force and are unchanged. What is changing, and quite rapidly, is the size of the territory remaining under the control of the Kiev regime. I advise all those who are cheering on their Ukrainian sidekicks to keep this in mind. Think not about Zelensky's clique, but about the Ukrainian people, whose long-term interests lie in peace and good-neighborliness with Russia. So far, our Western colleagues are not good at doing that.
Thank you for your attention.
