Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on Ukraine
Point of order:
Mme.President,
This chamber is overcrowded. And so is the speakers’ list for this meeting in the part of non-members of the Security Council, who call themselves ministers of foreign affairs of Western countries. The European Union, save few exceptions, has no countries with independent foreign policies. Therefore, there are no foreign policy ministers, but there are just officials who claim to act like ones. The entire foreign policy of the EU is governed from Brussels, and Brussels is governed from Washington. So please tell me what value the repetitive remarks of those officials are going to add (apart from the opportunity to appear on their national TV with words of “unconditional and unwavering support” for their clients in Kiev)?
There is an Envoy of the European Union to the United Nations in New York. He can speak out a consolidated position. EU states pursue a common foreign and security policy. What new can you add to that? Perhaps a couple of words about the weapons that you supply the regime in Kiev with? The very same weapons that Kiev uses against non-military targets – peaceful civilians in Russia towns.
When the UK takes the floor, we suggest that they tell us how come that former Prime-Minister Johnson talked Kiev out of signing an initialed peace treaty with Russia in April 2022? How come that he inspired Kiev to keep fighting and doomed dozens of thousands of poor Ukrainians to die on the frontline?
Where were you all yesterday when the Security Council was discussing the Middle East and the situation in Gaza? Where was the Secretary-General? I would like to remind you that none of the countries of the European Union, and indeed of the West, has ever taken the initiative to convene a single meeting on Gaza, where the number of civilian casualties (most of them women and children) as a result of flagrant violations of IHL by Israel in four and a half months has exceeded the figures of any military conflict in recent years.
This speaks very eloquently of your hypocrisy and your double standards.
As a heads-up, I am not going to listen to ritualistic incantations of representatives of European capitals. Let them compete in rhetoric with one another cluttering the screen time with hypocrisy and double-dealing.
Thank you.
Statement:
Mme.President,
Today's meeting, convened at the initiative of a number of Western delegations creates a feeling of a deja vu. A year ago in this chamber the Maltese Presidency organized a similar "ritual" dedicated to the anniversary of the start of our special military operation, where European ministers flocked together to read out copy-pasted anti-Russian remarks. A year ago, there was a trend for the Western bloc to publicize its "pseudo-peaceful" initiatives, which, in essence, boiled down to the sly Orwellian oxymoron "war is peace". At the same time, the West was openly indoctrinating V. Zelensky, who clearly lacks strategic thinking, with the dangerous and absurd illusion that with Western support he would be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield. A certain gentleman from the "beautiful garden", for whom everyone from outside the "golden billion" is a weed plant, tried especially hard. Another “Orwellian thing” was that the EU has been supplying weapons to the Kiev regime on which they spent money from the Peace Foundation.
Another year has passed. Ukraine utterly failed in its celebrated counteroffensive, but the West continued to "pump weapons" into the Kiev regime anyway, encouraging it to throw more and more Ukrainian lives into the flames of the conflict. Throwing away all decorum, the United States started to call this conflict a profitable business project - so profitable it turned out for American military industry. At the same time, they persistently promoted a discussion of a completely dead-end "pseudo-peace formula", where countries of the Global South and East were dragged in either in Copenhagen or Davos. To make that happen, they used all sorts of tricks in order to pass it off as "broad international support". At the same time, it is obvious that the global majority are well aware what stands behind these intrigues and are not at all eager to appear as bit-part actors. Besides, they see that it is pointless to discuss anything without Russia.
What has this year brought to Ukraine? More senseless victims numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the impending collapse of the economy and the deepest crisis of statehood. The latter due to the fact that the complete incapacity and lack of independence of the leadership in Kiev becomes increasingly obvious to the people of Ukraine. Burying itself in corruption, the regime cannot even cope with basic social obligations, begging - however unsuccessfully - for donors to pay pensions. The young (and now the not-so-young) generation gets rounded up in the streets and thrown into "meat assaults" designed to show Western donors that their investments are paying off.
We have heard and will continue to hear a lot of pathetic speeches today. But truth is, the West is not interested in helping Ukraine at all. The essence of Western policy towards Ukraine was recently summed up frankly by Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of “The Economist”. She said in a TV interview, “Giving money to Ukraine is the cheapest way for the US to enhance its security. The fighting is being done by Ukrainians, their people are being killed. The US and Europe are supplying them weapons. And in doing that we are pushing back against Putin”.
Paying for their interests with the lives of today's "Ukrainian natives", the US-led West tries to solve its geopolitical problems in the best neo-colonial traditions. The goal is to prevent Washington from losing its self-assumed role of world hegemon, and not let other powerful and self-sufficient global poles to emerge.
Be that as it may, it is already clear that in this "proxy war" that the US, EU, and NATO wage on Russia with the hands of Ukrainians, the losing side is Ukraine. No less important (though it may be hard for our European colleagues to accept) is that Ukraine is not the only loser in this conflict. The other one, and maybe the main one is the European Union itself.
I want to take this opportunity to address representatives of the European Union states. You have been working the European project for so long, proud that you have managed to form a common foreign and security policy. We remember those times when the EU cherished plans for its own geopolitical role and had "its own special opinion" on key international issues. It is striking how easily you parted with all these ambitions, returning to the ranks of obedient satellites of the United States. The conflict in Ukraine, which you are so diligently fueling by shoveling leftovers out of European arsenals, is exacerbating migration problems in your countries, hitting your energy sector. As we learned this week, the direct losses of Germany alone, who is considered the "locomotive of the EU," from the US-imposed anti-Russian sanctions amounted to at least $200 billion. What are the European interests in this? It is a pity that you have forgotten that the US and Great Britain have always been the main beneficiaries of any conflict on the territory of continental Europe and purposefully fomented contradictions there in order to prevent emergence of another geopolitical competitor - a united Europe living in peace and cooperation with its neighbor Russia. You were consistently injected with Russophobic poison through the new EU members, who pursued American interests, and in the end, you were completely poisoned. And now, instead of strategic partnership and profitable joint economic projects, you are painting Russia as an enemy. You shoot yourselves in the leg, supposedly breaking free from energy dependence Russia, but falling into a tougher energy dependence on the United States.
Moreover, today not only Ukraine, but the whole of Europe is at risk of once again becoming a springboard for a military confrontation, in which you are being consistently dragged from across the ocean. Does the population of Europe need this? I would like to believe that they do not. Opinion polls conducted in January in 12 European countries show that only 10 % of Europeans believe that Ukraine can defeat Russia. European farmers protest, not willing to lose their agricultural markets due to the dumping by Ukrainian exporters. Footage of clashes on the Polish-Ukrainian border has become viral. It shows Polish border controls refusing to let through Ukrainian trucks with grain. It is obvious that there is no "European future" for the corrupt and criminal Ukraine with its impoverished population. And that is exactly what Ukraine has turned into from an "all-Soviet breadbasket" – through the efforts of its current puppet-leaders.
From the moment Ukraine gained formal independence, it was assigned an unenviable role of an anti-Russian springboard. In 2004 it saw its first West-orchestrated anti-constitutional coup d'état, which ultimately failed to have the people’s support. Then the West began to prepare another coup so as to rule out any "slip-ups" and make sure that patriotically oriented opposition would be wiped out forever. This is exactly what has been happening since the "Maidan" coup of 2014.
The rise to power of Western Russophobe-sponsored nationalists and neo-Nazis in 2014 marked a watershed moment in Ukraine's recent history. The anti-constitutional coup d'état, the tenth anniversary of which is just around the corner, was made possible by blatant interference in the internal affairs of that country. That was when Kiev started to be forcefully involved in venturous projects that aimed to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia. A course was set towards dismissing the interests and violating the rights of the inhabitants of southeastern Ukraine. A brutal and inhumane "anti-terrorist operation" started against those who sought to preserve their identity and their historical and cultural roots. During the ATO, the army and national battalions were used in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution.
Thing is, there were no terrorists in Donbas. ICJ confirmed it in a recent decision. Kiev’s steps triggered a deterioration of Ukrainian statehood, further radicalization, growth of nationalism, and numerous civilian casualties.
One of Kiev’s puppeteers, a representative of the United Kingdom wondered if we are not sorry to send our sons to fight in Ukraine. Of course we are. We are sorry for poor Ukrainians too, who are sent to die for the sake of Western geopolitical interests. But the British representative forgot to mention that we did not come to start a war, but we came to stop it. To stop the war that Kiev had been waging with your support on the civilian population of Donbas. When Russia stepped in, Kiev’s war on Donbas had already killed 14,000 people over eight years. This was the main reason why we started a special military operation.
As for who we are fighting in Ukraine, you can answer this question yourseves if you recall whom the Kiev regime praises as heroes. Who are Bandera and Shukhevych, whose units, together with the Nazis, killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians? Ask Mr. Sikorski, who will speak later today. He will tell you about the "Volyn massacre" by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and how it is remembered in Poland. We believe that if a country's leaders honor Nazis, speak like Nazis, and allow the display of Nazi symbols, then Nazis they are. And you are too cowardly and selectively blind to recognize this.
Since we have Mr. Sejournet and Mr. Cameron here today (although they are not in the room), I would like to raise another topic that has been extremely uncomfortable for our Western colleagues for some time - the Minsk Agreements. About a year ago, we all heard the confessions of Petro Poroshenko, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, and Boris Johnson that neither France and Germany, nor the United Kingdom ever took these agreements seriously. They were not going to push the Ukrainian authorities to implement them, and were only using them to drag out time and give Kiev room to prepare for a war with Russia. This was, in fact, a "guilty plea" by the leaders of these states, who openly and even proudly recognized the fact that they had deliberately violated UN Security Council resolution 2202, which enshrined the Minsk Agreements. But this does not prevent representatives of the same states from speaking in the Council today, as if nothing happened, to lecture other members, talk about the importance of upholding international law, and accuse others of failing to comply with UNSC resolutions.
More precisely, they call for compliance with the “rules-based international order”, where they make rules themselves for own benefit. All these years since the signing of the Minsk Agreements, the Kiev regime has continued military preparations, strengthened the combat potential of the armed forces, and intensified military and technical cooperation with foreign countries.
Only after all attempts to achieve from the Ukrainian side and its Western patrons a conscientious and consistent implementation of the document fundamental to the settlement of the internal Ukrainian crisis - the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements - proved futile, was the decision taken to launch a special military operation to protect the lives of the inhabitants of Donbas in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.
Mme.President,
Today my American colleague, trying to find new reasons to attack Russia, has just mentioned Alexei Navalny, who was convicted of a criminal offense and passed away in prison of natural causes. Can you answer why the Kiev regime tortured to death an American journalist, Gonzalo Lira, whom neither you nor your leaders did anything to rescue? You keep shamefully silent about this and other crimes by the Kiev regime, and just lay the blame at someone else’s doorstep.
Esteemed colleagues,
Any conflict ends sooner or later. This will happen to the conflict in Ukraine too, we are sure of that. By all means, the longer it lasts thanks to Western weapon deliveries to the regime in Kiev, the worse peace conditions will be for Ukraine.
In the long run, it will matter a lot what conclusions the Western bloc draws for itself. Will it impose, with suicidal persistence, its one-sided "rules-based order", trying to divide the world into satellites and enemies, or will it engage in a meaningful dialogue to find ways to build a truly just world order where the interests of all states will be guaranteed?
So far, we regret to note that Europe has fallen into strategic blindness: it sees the Euro-Atlantic security architecture through a "gunsight", fearing a Russian threat against which it must defend itself, while denying Russia its legitimate defensive interests. This is a futile and flawed approach that undermines the basic principles of the indivisibility of security.
You build up ridiculous fears about Russia's allegedly imminent aggression against European countries. Have you by any chance forgotten that it had been European states – Poland, Sweden, France, Germany – that attacked the Russian state in different historic periods trying to conquer it, and were invariably defeated? The US tried to do the same during the Cold War. We also know the disreputable role of Great Britain, whose diplomacy for centuries set countries and peoples against each other, and who continues to do so to this day. Russian statehood was formed against the backdrop of constant external threat. Our "peace-loving" Western colleagues do not like to remember the fact that it was Russia that had to repel Western aggression all the time. But our people remember this very well. We know that the public in Western countries is losing its trust in the anti-Russian propaganda about a mythical "Russian threat". That is why their governments surround them with a "bubble of lies", trying to prevent any truth from getting in. But truth still finds its way thanks to the efforts of those who understand what the world will be exposed to should the current confrontation continue or aggravate. And then there are breakthroughs like the one made by Tucker Carlson, an American journalist, whose interview with the Russian President was an eye-opener for millions around the world.
Beyond the horizon of the current moment, the debate about a fair and indivisible Euro-Atlantic security becomes increasingly important. In its current battered form, it applies only to the United States and its NATO allies, who have arrogated to themselves the right to interfere in any international issue and the internal affairs of other states. They deployed military bases by our borders in violation of key understandings that ended the Cold War era. Western leaders deceived us then and want to deceive us now by absolutizing the right for NATO to expand uncontrollably and to turn virtually any corner of the world into the its "zone of responsibility".
I would like to recall that Russia offered a substantive conversation on security guarantees as early as the end of 2021 and put forward concrete proposals to NATO and the United States, but those were arrogantly rejected. That resulted in a new "hot-phase" conflict in Europe. The West left us no choice, we had to protect our people and our future. At the same time, we have never refused to negotiate. It is the Kiev regime who did so. I would like to emphasize that it is still possible to preserve Ukraine in some form, but it must be a peaceful, neutral Ukraine, in which there is no discrimination and Russophobia, in which Nazi criminals are not glorified, and from which no threats come to Russia. These are precisely the goals that our special military operation has set to achieve. Therefore, it is up to the collective West. They will have to choose whether it will take us to fight to the end, which we know how to, or whether common sense will prevail in Washington, London and Brussels and they will try to save at least something of Ukraine.
Thank you.
