August 30, 2024
Mr. President,
We’ve listened carefully to the information provided by Mr. Adedeji Ebo.
Colleagues,
The day before yesterday, Western delegations gathered Security Council members in this chamber for their “ritual” monthly briefing on Ukraine. But what was their purpose in doing so, apart from”ticking the box”, is something that remains mystery to all of us. Thus, we’ve heard nothing new from them, only well-worn anti-Russian clichés and “fakes” that, by the way, we have repeatedly debunked earlier in this very chamber. And from the statements of the Western colleagues one could conclude that they essentially gathered the members of the Security Council in order to draw our attention to the 33rd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. In other words, their desire to keep the Ukrainian issue “afloat”in the Security Council resulted in UNSC wasting much valuable time that otherwise we could have spent on much more pressing issues, which are really of concern to the world majority. That’s not the only problem. On that day, the Security Council chamber once again saw many EU delegations attending the meeting under Rule 37, but all of them were diligently repeating the same arguments they received from Brussels, which had no “added value” for the discussion. All this just deepened the impression that we simply wasted our time on nothing.
In this regard, I’d like to remind you that our western colleagues spared no effort in March to block the meeting requested by Russia on the 25th anniversary of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. I recall that at that time they argued – the Permanent Representative of France was particularly impassioned – that it was not appropriate for the Council to “commemorate” any anniversaries. But we did not ask to commemorate anything. The only thing we wanted was to remind everybody that the echo of NATO’s aggression in the Balkans is still reverberating across the region, which is still unsafe. Thus, we have confronted once again with egregious double standards, which have already become a sort of calling card of our Western colleagues.
I’m sure they are going to wave that card around today, in attempt to prove that it is our event that is a complete waste of time. And this is despite the fact that our today’s meeting is devoted to a particularly important and topical issue – namely, the western arms supplies to the Kiev regime as a factor impeding a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.
Distinguished Colleagues,
As you are all well aware, the hot phase of the Ukrainian crisis started 2.5 years ago, when Russia had to start its special military operation in order to defend the inhabitants of Donbass and eradicate the threats emanating from Ukraine. Today it is perfectly clear that this phase would not have started if our former western partners had not pumped Ukraine with weapons, preparing it for a conflict with Russia, while hiding behind the Minsk agreements approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2202 of 2015. As a matter of fact, the Ukrainian crisis would not have begun if it hadn’t been for Washington and its allies that through the 2014 anti-constitutional coup brought to power a radical nationalist opposition group, which immediately set a course to squeeze out of the country everything related to Russia, Russian language, our shared culture and history. As a result, in the same year, the Kiev regime unleashed war against its population living in the east and southeast of the country. And in February 2022, we came there to stop this war. Thus, the destructive role of the West in this ongoing Ukrainian tragedy is obvious.
Ukraine’s leadership, as we are all well aware, had an excellent chance to get out of this vicious and terrible circle with dignity a month after the beginning of our special military operation. At that time, there were initialed necessary bilateral documents in Istanbul, which were very beneficial for Ukraine. However, a number of Western leaders, in particular former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, convinced President Zelensky to reject the agreement promising him that with the help of Western weapons, he would allegedly be able to defeat Russia and return the country back to its 1991 borders.
Insidious motives of the Western countries are absolutely clear to us. They have spent so much effort and money to make out of Ukraine an “anti-Russia”, which could (they reckoned) at least weaken our country, so they simply could not allow it to happen that two brotherly Slavic peoples reconcile so easily. It is precisely the perverted “divide and rule” logic of former colonial powers that our African and Asian colleagues perfectly remember. What on earth the Ukrainians were thinking about at that time – it’s hard to say.
What we saw as a result was a frenzied pumping of Western weapons into Ukraine. Primarily, Ukraine was supplied with old Soviet-made weapons, which had to be somehow disposed of. However, the Kiev regime also received quite modern western equipment: tanks, APCs, artillery equipment, air defense equipment, MLRSs, and most importantly, ammunition and long-range missiles. According to the data available on the Internet, as of February 2024, the total amount of Western aid to Ukraine amounted to €243 billion. Since some time ago Western countries have concealed the data on the military assistance to Ukraine, but as of the end of 2023, NATO countries provided €98 billion in military aid for Ukraine, and the EU – €27 billion, that is €125 billion in total, which is more than half of all the funds allocated to Ukraine. As we all recall, in the first half of 2024, the US allocated (though, not without a struggle) a new $61 billion military aid package to the Kiev regime. Given the handouts from other NATO countries, we can state confidently that in 2024 the overall amount of Western military aid to the Zelensky regime amounted to approximately €200 billion.
I am talking about this in such detail so that our colleagues from the Global South could get a better grasp of this figure. We have said once before that the total need of all humanitarian agencies in 2023 was $56.7 billion (4 times less), and it was funded at only 38.3%. I am not even talking about the fact that the United States, as the largest contributor to the UN budget, is still unable to pay due $1 billion, which is paltry compared to that amount, provoking thus a liquidity crisis in our organization.
It is clear that assistance to Ukraine, primarily military assistance, is a source of revenue for western weapon manufacturers. As we all remember, American leaders convinced Congress to approve the latest aid package by arguing that it is actually a profitable business program, which also will create new more jobs in the United States.
As regards the Kiev regime itself, after failing its much-hyped 2023 “counteroffensive”, it has exhausted its arsenals and is now fully dependent on Western “handouts”. And these handouts are still coming, although Ukraine has now become something of a “suitcase without a handle” for the West, which is something that is a pain to carry around, and a shame to throw away. And here we come to the main conclusion: but for western arms supplies, Ukraine would have stopped fighting long ago, which many western politicians of the “flowering garden”, including Mr. Borrell himself, acknowledged. And since we never pursued the goal to destroy Ukraine as a state, the senseless meat grinder would also have stopped, and the “expired” Ukrainian president would have no longer been able to throw hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens (who are trying by all means to avoid being sent to the front) to this bloodbath for the sake of preserving his power and pleasing the West.
The fact that Ukrainians do not want to fight is also evidenced by Ukrainian media. Men are captured on the streets and thrown to the front line with little or no training, to certain death. So it is absolutely not surprising that desertion in the Ukrainian army has reached unprecedented levels. There have already been initiated over 63,000 cases of desertion in Ukraine. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, in the first 6 months of 2024 alone, there have been started nearly 30,000 cases, which is three times as many as in 2022. Experts, however, believe that the real statistics is 2-3 times higher.
Colleagues,
Make no mistake: the bloody Ukrainian ringleader can make his people fight today only by force and coercion and only owing to the supply of western weapons, western intelligence, western instructors and mercenaries. That is why the topic of our meeting today is so important and pertinent.
Mr. President
Today, of course, we will hear ceremonial and well-worn mantra of our western colleagues about their determination to support Ukraine for as long as necessary. And that Ukraine is supposedly fighting for its survival and is allegedly a victim of aggression. But here’s the mishap: in August, the head of the Ukrainian junta made the fatal mistake and moved his troops across the border into the peaceful Russian region. And the world, as I said two days ago, saw the pictures of Ukrainian thugs with Nazi symbols looting and pillaging, taking hostages and shooting women, children and the elderly. This image turned out to be so far from that of an innocent victim of someone’s aggression, which the U.S. and its satellites sought so hard to mould Ukraine into, that they tried to disavow Zelensky’s “Kursk adventure” as quickly as possible. But the facts speak for themselves: you, gentlemen, are neck-deep in this adventure, and if it weren’t for your help and your weapons, the Ukrainian leader would not have dared to do that.
On August 28, Frank Whitworth, director of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, admitted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces used US satellite images in their attack on the Kursk region. And as the AFU itself can no longer do much, the Kursk adventure was made possible to great extent due to the large-scale involvement of western mercenaries. They don’t even hide this fact. So it is announced on the social networks of the American PMC “Forward Observation Group”. By the way, you can also see there photos of the combat position of its mortar detachment located in a children’s playground. Thus, our western colleagues can see with their own eyes, how the norms of IHL, which they discussed the other day in Geneva, are being flagrantly violated.
In order to achieve their goals, our Western hypocrites stick at nothing. For example, on August 12, a Rosseti repair unit was fired in the Kursk region with chemical weapons characteristic for the armaments of the US and German armies. Chemical weapons attacks also targeted some Russian military units on August 21. To carry out these attacks, units of the 74th separate radio-chemical defense regiment of the AFU were redeployed to Kursk region. Moreover, this all is happening with the oversight of Washington, London and Brussels. This is also evidenced by the fact that we found there manuals, which were used to train Ukrainian soldiers to use chemical munitions with the help of Western-made artillery systems. Moreover, Kiev received about 500 tons of triethanolamine, which is used to create nitrogen mustard gas.
In this regard, I would like to remind that Western moralists have long been sending depleted uranium shells and cluster munitions to Ukraine. Incidently, the other day there emerged information that the US is sending cluster munitions into Ukraine. These munitions are delivered through Germany, where they are stored, particularly in the town of Miesau. At the same time, Germany is known to publicly oppose the transfer of such munitions to Kiev and is a party to an international treaty that bans the use of such type of weaponry.
Distinguished Colleagues,
I spoke about the consequences of Zelensky’s “Kursk adventure” in detail yesterday; I will not dwell on it today. We see Abramses, Leopards, HYMARSs and ATACMSs on fire, and the Russian army is advancing rapidly liberating new regions of Donbass. Yesterday Ukraine lost its first F-16. What else can the Kiev regime do, while failing so spectacularly? The only thing left is to involve US-led NATO in direct confrontation with Russia. Kiev simply has no other “plan B”. The easiest way to do this is to organize a large-scale provocation, like Bucha, and accuse Russia of it. In this connection, we recently warned of a provocation with a so-called dirty nuclear bomb being prepared by the Kiev regime.
But this is a troublesome and rather complicated affair, which is quite difficult to carry out without Western suzerains. Therefore, they had to choose another option – to get permission to strike far into Russian territory by using Western missiles. So far, Washington and most other capitals have disavowed their giving such permission, as they realize that this is fraught with a large-scale escalation far beyond Ukraine, with all the implications a conflict with a nuclear power may entail. But Zelensky won’t stop. According to the information we have, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office Andrey Yermak and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov are in the United States now, holding meetings with US administration officials in an attempt to persuade them to lift restrictions on long-range strikes deep into Russian territory using US weapons.
Colleagues, roughly speaking, this is what we currently have. By attacking the Kursk region, the Ukrainian ringleader clearly decided for escalation rather than peace. The question remains open whether the US and its allies will also choose escalation for the sake of their Ukrainian “suitcase without a handle”. Or whether they will have the common sense not to cross that line. Much, by the way, will depend on the countries of the Global South, which have become increasingly assertive in voicing their demands for peace. By unleashing his attack on the Kursk region, the head of the Kiev regime deceived these countries. I hope that we will hear your assessments in this regard today in this Chamber.
Distinguished Colleagues,
In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to another topic related to Ukraine. On 20 August, the Verkhovnaya Rada of Ukraine adopted a draft law that would ban any religious communities in Ukraine if they are allegedly “affiliated” with any religious organizations in Russia. To pass a verdict, courts will suffice an opinion of a religious expert, which in the conditions of witch-hunting can be easily falsified. The document is obviously aimed against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The goal is to eliminate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and all its congregations or force them to join other religious organizations. Hundreds of monasteries and millions of Orthodox believers in Ukraine are about to become outlaws and may soon lose their property and their place of prayer.
The adopted law is not in line with the Constitution of Ukraine, nor with the rule of law. It is merely a political declaration intended to legalize the destruction of the religious community of the majority. This is an unprecedented and anti-democratic decision, condemned even by the Pope who is unlikely to have pro-Russian sentiments. The law defines criteria that allow to establish that a certain group of people belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which means that these people must be persecuted. All this is already accompanied by blatant harassment of clergy and believers, threats and blackmail, violence and mass beatings. There have been fabricated dozens of criminal cases resulted in lots of wrongful convictions on political grounds. A number of archpastors and pastors of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are arrested, imprisoned or have received unjust sentences. We told about it in the SC Chamber on November 17, 2023. We managed then to halt repressions, but the lack of proper response to this sacrilege from the West emboldened the Ukrainian ringleader and he went back to implementing his plans.
We have no doubt that it is the moral duty of every human being, regardless of his or her faith, to prevent the massacre being prepared in Ukraine. Otherwise, the already difficult Ukrainian crisis would exacerbate, opening a new page of the bloody internal confrontation in that country. It’s important for a person to believe at least in something. The leaders of the Kiev regime, obviously, fail to meet this requirement, and the greed and servility of the West, coupled with primordial Russophobia, have completely obscured their minds.
We trust that our colleagues, who still have faith in their hearts and minds, will take a principled stand and say no to this madness.
Thank you for your attention.