24 February 2025
Mr. President,
Today, we once again see in this chamber European rangers landed here under rule 37 to support Ukraine. This group of rangers consists of so-called foreign ministers, whose names I don’t even have time to remember, and frankly speaking, Mr. President, I’m not even trying to. The only thing we are happy about is the constancy of our Polish neighbors. I remember Radoslaw Sikorski very well, especially his pithy tweet “Thank you, USA”, published after the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Today these “ministers” will read out their hackneyed cookie-cutter statements in front of the cameras, demonstrating their TV viewers that they steadfastly support Ukraine in its fight “until the last Ukrainian”. You’d better mind your own business and clean up your “blooming garden”. After all, there was a geopolitical hurricane there, which felled many of your “blooming trees”.
Mr. President,
We regard today’s meeting as a blatant attempt to thwart the nascent positive developments, which could bring about a lasting and sustainable resolution of the Ukrainian crisis in the very near future. We have had yet another opportunity to see that the Kiev regime and its sponsors in European capitals are interested not in peace but rather in pursuing the war “until the last Ukrainian”.
Meanwhile, recent Russian-American contacts on the high and highest levels have broken the ice. Equally important is the fact that recently, thanks to the new policy of the unblinkered Trump administration, we know what really happened and is happening in Ukraine under Zelensky, the details are coming to light now. It has also become far clearer to many why the Ukrainian crisis turned into an armed conflict three years ago, despite all the persistent and consistent years-long efforts by Russia to prevent this scenario.
The world has seen that the entire anti-Russian “Ukraine project” was financed from the very beginning by the West, which we have repeatedly pointed out in this chamber. This unflattering situation was exposed upon the termination of the USAID activities, which from 2021 to 2024, as turned out, spent $30.6 billion on Ukraine, or 21% of all its spending abroad. Assistance from USAID in 2024 equaled 3% of Ukraine’s GDP. Independent Ukraine simply did not exist and does not exist: the Agency paid for the activities of the Ukrainian state apparatus, trained Ukrainian judges and exerted direct influence on the Ukrainian judiciary. The Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovnaya Rada, operated on American funding – thus, USAID allocated $25 million for public events and the work of secretariats of parliamentary commissions. Apparently, this is precisely how we should understand the meaning of the Ukrainian word “nezalezhnost” (i.e., “independence”).
We also understood how much “freedom of speech” really costs in Ukraine. Up to 90 per cent of the Ukrainian media turned out to be financed through USAID. This agency spent about $5 million on so-called “opinion leaders” in social networks. It also paid tens of millions of dollars to US and world celebrities who travelled to Ukraine to speak out in support of the Kiev regime. Therefore, this whole picture, which made many people believe in the “worldwide popularity” of the former comedian, appeared to be utterly deceitful.
At the same time, it was long before the events of three years ago that the Agency started buying up Ukraine and shaping its political landscape. For example, USAID allocated more than $100,000 to finance a TV show that contributed to Zelensky’s victory in the 2019 election. Immediately after that, organizations funded by the Agency prohibited Zelensky from supporting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, from holding a referendum on the format of negotiations with Donbass and the principles of a peaceful settlement, from reviewing the language law, from rehabilitating politicians of the “Yanukovych era” and returning them to politics, and from restoring access to Russian television. Being aware of all of this, we are not surprised by the fact that Zelensky, who was elected by three quarters of voters, immediately abandoned his campaign promises for establishing peace in the east of the country, protecting the Russian language and rectifying relations with Russia – those who bought his country lock stock and barrel, simply forbade him to do so.
Mr. President,
In this context, we would like to draw the attention of our colleagues to one aspect of how USAID shamelessly shaped the political landscape in Kiev. Last week, American lawyer Robert Amsterdam spoke about the direct participation of the State Department and the Agency in the creation of the schismatic so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This was done in an extremely cynical manner, with virtually no regard whatsoever to any democratic values. These confessions once again demonstrate how, through the efforts of unscrupulous officials, religion in Ukraine has been essentially relegated to a tool for fighting political opponents. A significant role in this process, as it became clear, was played by the then CIA head and by the special advisor on the freedom of faith – not only did they turn a blind eye to egregious violations of the rights of the believers, arbitrary arrests of clergy and violent seizures of churches in Ukraine, but they also did everything possible to encourage such travesties.
Moreover, Washington’s emissaries traveled all over the Middle East and North Africa, compelling local Orthodox Churches there to recognize the illegal, non-canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Now we know for a fact that all the means in the arsenal of Biden’s diplomacy were used to that end – including blackmail, threats, pressure, and arm-twisting. Obsessed with the desire to destroy the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and fracture the unity of Orthodox followers in Russia and Ukraine, they were hardly bothered by the fact that their actions undermined religious freedom in Ukraine. As you all remember, we have repeatedly drawn the attention of the Security Council to the situation around the persecution of the canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine. In response, we heard only hackneyed mantras about “Russian propaganda”. Are you going to repeat them today? Or can you summon the courage to at least voice your concerns about this information?
We welcome the fact that the incoming Trump administration enables those experts to speak out who had been previously stripped of such an opportunity because their assessments of the situation in Ukraine, including with regard to religious freedom, were at odds with the Western mainstream. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly condemned the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and a number of Republicans in Congress have requested an investigation into the interference of US agencies in Ukraine’s religious processes. We consider this a very important, albeit belated, turn of events.
Mr. President,
Under the former occupant of the White House, his Kiev underlings were able to get away with everything, even with the murder of American citizens. Last week, thanks to former Verkhovnaya Rada deputy Alexander Dubinsky, who is known to be in detention, we found out new details regarding the death in the Ukrainian custody of independent US journalist Gonzalo Lira. In our statements, we repeatedly drew the attention of our Council colleagues to his tragic death and highlighted the need to ensure that the Kiev regime respects human rights and fundamental freedoms. All in vain – you didn’t bother about the fate of Gonzalo Lira, nor about tens of thousands of other political prisoners in Ukraine. But at that moment he could still have been saved, had the Biden administration done at least something about it.
As follows from the personal correspondence of the late American blogger, which Dubinsky has in his possession, the security officers not only tortured Mr. Lira but also extorted money from him when he was held in the Kharkov detention center. After receiving 70,000 dollars from him, tortures and assault only intensified. Let me refer now to the Ukrainian Register of Judicial Decisions that contains a decision of the Dzerzhynsky District Court of Kharkov dated January 2024. During the hearings, Lira’s lawyer requested that Mir Lira be transferred to house arrest for medical reasons, but the prosecutor’s office, representatives of Ukraine’s security force, judges, and the medical unit of the Kharkov pre-trial detention center continued to unanimously claim that his life was not under threat. Just a few weeks later, he perished because he was not provided with timely medical assistance to deal with his injuries resulting from tortures. Moreover, we have all the documents attesting to the fact of extortion by the Security Service of Ukraine.
Distinguished colleagues,
I wish to emphasize that it was the publication of objective materials critical of the Zelensky clique and the Biden administration that cost Gonzalo Lira his life. And this is precisely for this that he was tormented to death following Zelensky’s orders. At that point, no Western officials, including from the United States, said anything whatsoever about it. They were unable to summon the courage not only to condemn this yet another crime by the Kiev regime, but even to somehow comment on what happened. Western politicians, as well as our Western colleagues on the Security Council, simply pretended that nothing had happened and only redoubled their efforts in accusing Russia of “aggression” (which was done to redirect media attention), while reaffirming their unchanged support for the Kiev regime. In other words, the death of an American citizen was viewed by the former President Biden’s team as nothing but a “collateral damage”.
But there are dozens, if not hundreds of thousands, of such cases involving Ukrainian citizens who are in opposition to Zelensky’s regime. At our last meeting, we already talked about how in 2022 Ukrainian officers tortured Artem Dmytruk, Rada deputy, to get testimony and a confession of treason from him. We urge all those who still continue to defend the Zelensky regime to finally recognize that concentration camps and secret torture chambers of Ukrainian prisons, where the “inconvenient” were tortured and then murdered, are not fabrications nor Russian propaganda. This is the reality in which Ukrainians have to live today.
Unfortunately, we cannot help Gonzalo Lira, but we can still help to release those who are being held illegally and on trumped-up pretexts by the Ukrainian clique. We call on all responsible governments and international organizations to condemn Zelensky’s criminal actions and to demand the release of all those who are still alive and can still fight for the truth. One of them is seventy-year-old human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya – we have mentioned her case at Security Council meetings on numerous occasions.
It is our duty to demand the release of Elena and many others who are enduring illegal persecution and torture. If you fail to understand this and are willing for political reasons to turn a blind eye to the crimes of the Kiev regime, then your lamentations about the importance of freedom of speech and respect for human rights (which you prioritize in all other situations barring none) are not worth an old song.
Mr. President,
In our statements in this chamber, we have also repeatedly exposed the rampant corruption in Ukraine that has permeated society under Zelensky. We pointed to the glorification of those responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians, Roma and Ukrainians during the Second World War. We provided information on massive violations of human rights. We disclosed instances of outright theft of Western assistance and the resale on the black market of weapons coming from the United States and Europe. They pointed to the illegitimacy of the Kiev ringleader, who had trampled on his country’s constitution in order to cling to power.
Today we can hear about all these things from senior American politicians as well and we can read about it in the Western media. This, of course, gives hope. There are growing chances that the deserved punishment will find that person who provoked the Ukrainian crisis into a hot phase, who violated basic Ukrainian laws, who betrayed the interests of his country, who abandoned realistic scenarios for a peaceful settlement of the conflict and who drowned his country in blood for his own profit and gain.
EU sponsors of Zelensky’s regime are still trying to vindicate him and pin all the blame for the Ukrainian crisis on Russia, attributing to our country all imaginable and unimaginable crimes, while, of course, turning a blind eye to what the Kiev regime is perpetrating and covering up for their bankrupt, thievish client. However, today’s vote on the American draft resolution proves that it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to do so. Because the facts are not in their favor. And there are more and more facts (unflattering for the Kiev regime and its puppeteers) that are coming to light now. We urge those in Europe who still have common sense and who can summon the courage, to distance themselves from the crimes of the Zelensky clique, and do that as soon as possible before it drags all the supporters to the bottom, as was prophetically predicted by Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Thank you for your attention.