Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on on threats to international peace and security caused by the green light of Western states to Kiev to use West-supplied weapons against the territory of Russia

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June 14, 2024

Mr.President,

We convened today’s meeting because the situation around Ukraine has been following an increasingly dangerous scenario. Western countries are aiming for another round of escalation, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences. In order to describe to you this context, I would like to start with some quotes from a number of Western political figures.

Boris Pistorius, German Defense Minister, said when addressing the Bundestag on June 5, “We must not believe that Putin will stop at Ukraine’s borders when he gets that far…We must be ready for war (with Russia) by 2029…We need defensive young women and men who can defend this country.”

French President Emmanuel Macron: “We believe we should allow them (the Ukrainians) to neutralize military facilities from which missiles are fired.”

The NATO Secretary General recently asserted that “the right to self-defense includes strikes on legitimate targets outside of Ukraine, and this is not an escalation.” Another of his revelations: “The UK has provided Ukraine with Storm Shadow cruise missiles for a long time without any restrictions.”

It is certainly not news to us that the Western countries, which have been “pumping arms” into the Kiev regime for two years now and banned it from even talking peace with Russia, are directly involved in the Ukrainian crisis and maintain it in the “acute” phase in every possible way. Some in the American elites occasionally let it slip that the proxy war fought on the territory of Ukraine by the hands of Ukrainian soldiers is the cheapest way for the West to put pressure on Russia. The US gives billion-dollar loans to its military industry as part of “aid” to Ukraine and helps it maintain super profits. Washington guides its European vassals from across the ocean, inciting them to a direct confrontation with Russia. And Europe, which has lost every piece of its geopolitical independence, blindly follows Washington’s course.

It is no secret either that since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Western instructors and mercenaries have been taking part in it. They suffer losses on a regular basis, however Western media prefer not to talk about it.

We are also well aware that the Western military control the use by Kiev of modern high-tech weapon systems, high-precision and long-range, whether it be the British Storm Shadow, the American ATACMS or French missiles, basically steering through this process in a manual mode. We know that Ukrainian soldiers on the ground lack technological capability to operate these missiles, wherefore suppliers of those systems assign flight missions and upload them into the system. As everyone learned from the leaked negotiations of Bundeswehr servicemen who discussed planned attack on the Crimean bridge, they also determine the final targets of the strikes. In other words, the fact that NATO countries are involved in the military actions in Ukraine and are complicit in the war crimes of the Kiev regime has long been well-known. We will give a proper response to all these aggressive actions and all those involved in these crimes will be punished.

Recently, however, a new dangerous trend has emerged. In their anti-Russian frenzy, European leaders appear to be getting increasingly out of touch. They seriously begin to dream of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Apparently, France and Germany have not learned the lessons of history. Their seething revanchism could be attributed to their total dependence on the United States in the military, political, technological, ideological and informational spheres, and also to their acute internal political problems, for the ruling European politicians and representatives of the European bureaucracy are rapidly losing the trust of their own citizens. All of this seems understandable, but there is one thing. It points either to their complete lack of understanding of the scale of the threat they pose, or to their obsessive belief in their own impunity and exclusiveness.

I would like to ask my Western colleagues if they realize that their leadership is actually pushing Europe to the brink of a new big war.

It is this desire (and not peace-loving thoughts) that stands behind all of the West’s pseudo-peaceful initiatives, including the upcoming conference in Bürgenstock, to which they invite as many countries as possible as a makeweight. The real NATO plans are epitomized by Emmanuel Macron in Berlin, waving a geographical map of the Russian-Ukrainian border area and showing which areas in Russia he thinks may be targeted. I would like to remind you that the same Emmanuel Macron said in January that “Russia must not win”.

I would like to address my colleagues from the countries of the Global South and, in general, all states whose leadership is pursuing a sensible course. Do not believe the deceitful appeals of the organizers of the meeting in Bürgenstock, which is nothing but a primitive attempt to give Russia an ultimatum, having subscribed to it everyone who shows up at the event. The blatant hypocrisy of this whole thing is obvious: what kind of peace can we talk about if its organizers convene pseudo-peace conferences with one hand, while increasing the supply of weapons to the Kiev regime and even openly giving the green light for their use on Russian territory with the other? And Zelensky, whose legitimacy is being questioned even inside Ukraine, directly declares that only Kiev should determine what peace would be like. Let me remind you that back in October 2022, he signed a decree banning negotiations with the Russian leadership.

We call on UN member states and the Secretariat not to get involved with the provocative and totally useless meeting in Bürgenstock and not to play bit parts in the clumsy anti-Russian intrigues of the West.

African countries, the Arab League, and Brazil have all put forward ideas that could serve as the beginning of a negotiation process. China has consistently shown a deep understanding of the root causes of the crisis. Unfortunately, Kiev and its sponsors are defiantly ignoring all these peace efforts and blatantly refuse to discuss them, hoping that they finally have a historic chance to defeat Russia.

That, of course, will never happen. The special military operation continues and its tasks are being consistently implemented.

Having suffered failures on the battlefield, the Ukrainian armed forces are cowardly hunting civilians, destroying residential buildings, kindergartens, schools and hospitals. And Western countries, having momentarily forgotten about international humanitarian law, are facilitating this in every possible way. For example, Spokesperson of the US Department of State, Matthew Miller, went to such lows as to state that allegedly “there are only military targets and no civilians in Belgorod, there are practically no civilians left there”.

On June 7, Ukrainian armed forces launched an attack with ATACMS that caused a section of a residential building in Lugansk to collapse, killing six people and injuring 60. On the same day, Ukrainian militants struck a store in the village of Sadovoye in the Kherson region at a time when a significant number of visitors and staff were gathered there. First they hit it with a guided bomb, then with HIMARS, killing 22 people. Lately, a Russian journalist, Valery Kozhin, a cameraman for the NTV television channel, was killed in Gorlovka and his colleagues were wounded. That was a precision strike. Sadly enough, the United Nations Secretariat did not have the courage to name the guilty party and condemn this terrorist act.

The United States decision to lift the ban on arms supplies to the Ukrainian nationalist battalion Azov deserves special mention. Azov is recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. The United States has also previously openly stated that the Azov fighters hold racist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist views. They have not abandoned their monstrous inhumane ideology even now. Nevertheless, Washington has recently ceased to see any human rights violations in the actions of Azov.

The Kiev regime not only commits crimes against Russian citizens, but also destroys its own population. In the face of serious setbacks and losses on the battlefield, the Ukrainian armed forces are literally trying to plug the holes with forcibly conscripted men. Confident in their impunity, representatives of military commissions have opened a hunt for them, pulling them out of cars and public transportation. Healthy or sick, they are all deemed fit to go to the front.

The desire of people to hide, avoid the fate of fighting for Zelensky’s regime, is completely understandable. Those who have no opportunities to pay off are forced to go into hiding. Some manage to cross the border and escape, some do not.

Ukrainian men are being systematically exterminated, Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural assets are being sold off to foreign investors for next to nothing. There is no money to pay back on multimillion-dollar loans to international organizations. All thanks to the Western sponsors of the puppet Kiev regime. Having squeezed all juices out of Ukraine, they will throw it away to the dustbin of history and will go to plant democracy elsewhere, in a gullible country ready to believe deceitful Western promises.

Colleagues,

We have repeatedly said that we are ready to discuss ways to establish lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe based on the realities on the ground and with due account for our security interests. We have consistently demonstrated this – from the Minsk Package to the Istanbul Agreements, which failed to take place through the fault of the West. From the very first days, Russia put forward options for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, aimed not at freezing the conflict but at actually resolving it. But our initiatives were ultimately rejected: the West and Kiev decided to try to defeat Russia. These attempts failed.

Today, the President of the Russian Federation articulated another concrete peace proposal. It is based on our principled position: the neutral non-aligned and non-nuclear status of Ukraine, its demilitarization and denazification, the full safeguarding of the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine, recognition of the new territorial realities and the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In the future, all these basic and principle-based provisions should be fixed in the form of fundamental international agreements. Naturally, this also implies the lifting of all Western sanctions against Russia.

We recognize the responsibility for stability in the world and reaffirm our readiness for dialogue with all countries, but this should not be an imitation of the peace process in order to serve someone else’s vested interests, as in Bürgenstock, but a serious, detailed conversation on the whole range of global security issues. If the West and Kiev refuse this peace proposal, they will bear the political and moral responsibility for the continuation of bloodshed. It is obvious that the realities on the ground, on the line of contact, will continue to change not in favor of the Kiev regime. And the conditions for the start of negotiations will then be different.

Thank you.

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