Sergey Lavrov: “Nuclear terrorism has become Ukraine’s chief trademark”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks at the ambassadorial roundtable discussion of Ukraine crisis settlement, Moscow, September 12, 2024:

“Ladies and gentlemen,

This is not the first time we are meeting. We have received highly positive feedback about such briefings from the diplomatic missions present here.

We would like your governments to know more about our position. We regularly present it at the highest level. President Vladimir Putin articulates our views and provides detailed explanations of developments and Russia’s reactions to them. You can also analyse the Foreign Ministry’s views and the assessments provided by our political analysts. Sometimes you, our friends, have specific questions. We are ready to answer them during these friendly discussions.

We are aware that similar events are held in other capitals, including Kiev and the capitals of NATO members. But they are held behind closed doors because the ideas they propose are not suitable for public discourse. We have no such concerns. We have nothing to be ashamed of.

Today, we would like to update you on the progress of the war that the West is waging against the Russian Federation through its Kiev proxies and with the use of Ukrainian bodies. This would not have been possible without the huge supplies of Western weapons, ammunition and military equipment.

There are many regrettable aspects to this situation, including the direct involvement of the Ukrainian army, with direct support from the West, in large-scale terrorist attacks. More and more direct attacks on civilian facilities and civilians are reported every day. This is happening in the Kursk Region, which the Ukrainian forces have invaded and from which they are being pushed out and will be eventually be expelled. There is no doubt about that. For more than a year now they have been attacking civilian infrastructure and civilians in the Belgorod and Bryansk regions. They sometimes also deploy drones against other border regions in the Russian Federation.

As I have said, the offensive weapons used for such terrorist attacks have been supplied by the West. When sending these weapons, the West says that the Kiev regime can use them as it sees fit, and that these weapons cease to be Western as soon as they cross the border and are accepted by the Ukrainian army. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and other EU and NATO officials have repeatedly stated that Ukraine can do what it wants with these weapons. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy arrived in Ukraine yesterday. It is an understandable set-up.  There is no doubt whatsoever that the decision to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons on targets inside Russia was taken long ago, and now they are only trying to find the most suitable, acceptable and elegant way of presenting it to the public.

We understand that the collective West has described the war against Russia as existential. Their goal is to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. I would like to remind you that other “great” players in the history of international relations, including Napoleon and Hitler, had the same goal. It is not surprising that many foreign politicians who have retained their sanity periodically remind their overly zealous colleagues that forgetting the lessons of history would have disastrous consequences for them.

The current system operates as follows, and this is publicly available information. In addition to providing increasingly long-range weapons, NATO also supplies Kiev with data from its military space intelligence. This intelligence is used to locate and strike targets deep within Russian territory, including residential buildings, life-support facilities, energy and industrial infrastructure, and social facilities such as schools, kindergartens, and clinics.

Moreover, Western military specialists are literally coordinating the strikes on civilian targets in real time, using high-precision weapons. The planning and programming of flight missions are carried out by instructors and representatives from NATO countries that supply these weapons to Kiev. Our experts are confident that without such specialist involvement, it would be impossible to use these complex systems. These tasks can only be performed by professionals who have worked with these systems for a long time and know how to operate them.

It would be impossible to train someone to use them in just a few weeks.

Ukrainian special services, with the help of their Western patrons, are simultaneously actively involving radical Islamists in terrorist activities. We would like to thank everyone present here for their condolences in connection with the March 22, 2024 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert facility, which claimed the lives of 145 people. The ongoing investigation has already uncovered evidence that the main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry was involved in preparing the attack. Specifically, the escape routes for the perpetrators through the Russian-Ukrainian border were meticulously mapped out. This is not the only time when Ukrainian special services enlisted radical Islamists in the preparation and execution of terrorist attacks.

We have recently received information that “emissaries” from the Ukrainian intelligence service are present in the Idlib de-escalation zone within the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. They are recruiting local militants from Jabhat Al-Nusra, now known as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, with the intention of involving them in nefarious operations. These special services are now shifting their focus to the south, towards the Sahara-Sahel zone in Africa. They team up with recruited extremists there to carry out terrorist attacks against the armed forces of multiple countries.

After the Burgenstock conference (I know that some of you were present at that forum), a decision was made, although it was not widely publicised. The essence is that it is necessary to make headway on at least some points of the “Zelensky formula.”

The “Zelensky formula” is treated like the Bible, the Catechism, the Quran or any other sacred text that should not be deviated from in the slightest. This is how Vladimir Zelensky, the head of the Kiev regime, and his Western backers present it.

In the follow-up to the Burgenstock process, a working group for energy security held a meeting via videoconference in late August 2024. They discussed a document that I have seen. It urged the concerned parties to take all possible measures to prevent attacks on civilian energy infrastructure. It also mentioned resolutions of the UN Security Council and condemned Russia for its actions in Ukraine. These resolutions, passed by non-consensual votes, contained the correct language about the need to protect civilian energy infrastructure. At the August meeting, these points were reiterated, along with a call to refrain from attacking energy infrastructure and to restore the damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

In this connection, I want to say that the Russian Armed Forces strike solely at the infrastructure facilities that are directly involved in efforts to organise combat operations and influence actions by the Ukrainian forces at the line of contact, let alone inside the territory of the Russian Federation. I am referring to the Kursk Region.  However, all those who want to help Ukraine maintain its energy security, overlook the fact that Kiev was the first to attack civilian energy facilities at the line of contact.

The Kakhovka Hydro Power Station’s dam was blown up long before we have chosen our current battlefield strategy and tactics. The power plant itself was destroyed.  There were 200 casualties. We regard this as a direct terrorist attack.

Nuclear terrorism has become Ukraine’s chief trademark. You certainly must be following the reports about attacks and attempted attacks at the Leningrad, Kalinin, Kursk and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants.

The Zaporozhye plant was on the verge of disaster on August 11 of this year, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at it, igniting one of the two cooling towers. The fire seriously damaged the facility. This is a grave situation. But the West was flippant about it, although their puppets’ actions may eventually lead to a disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl tragedy. Europe, incidentally, will be the first to suffer. 

Tensions are riding high in the area adjoining the Kursk nuclear power plant.  During his August 27 visit to the facility, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi saw for himself the traces of Ukrainian criminal drone assaults. Yet, Kiev does not conceal that the Kursk nuclear power plant was a target of their deliberate attacks. The materials we have prepared for you contain information on developments in the Kursk Region and other regions of Russia, where the Ukrainian regime regularly launches its terrorist attacks. There is evidence of Ukrainian forces executing civilians, preventing evacuations, killing doctors, ambulance crews, volunteers, and rescue workers, as well as cases of large-scale looting.

If you have no objections, I would ask to show you a 5-minute video with an execution of [Russian] POWs, an act banned by all thinkable and unthinkable conventions.

I have mentioned the fact that the Ukrainian regime is active in displaying its terrorist instincts abroad, specifically on the African continent. Some Ukrainian officials – the press secretary of the Ukrainian Intelligence Service and the Ukrainian ambassador to Senegal, among others – made no bones about saying that Kiev had helped the militants, who had attacked government troops in northern Mali in late July of this year.

Mali and Niger immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Kiev, with many other African countries denouncing this attack.  Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council with the demand to urge Ukraine to discontinue its support for terrorists, particularly in the Sahel areas.

When it comes to the importance of ensuring the safety of critical energy infrastructure, we cannot but mention the performance they have staged over the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines organised two years ago. I have to speak about it.

We have sent numerous requests for assistance under international law to Germany. They should have been answered, but they were not. Denmark and Sweden, where we sent official requests as well, have not replied either. They also said that they had closed official investigations

The ongoing investigation in Germany are absolutely non-transparent. A while ago, the European media, German one, reported how that terrorist attack was presumably organised. According to them, five people were drinking and joking, and suddenly they decided that blowing up the Nord Stream would be a great idea. They had diving skills, and so they rented a yacht. There were six of them on it. They sailed to the area where the pipelines were laid, dived down, placed the explosives, [went up] and hit the button. Only those who are afraid of the truth and want to vindicate the criminal Kiev regime can believe that version. We will not abandon this subject. We will continue to demand a transparent investigation, which the United States, Britain and their allies are doing their best to thwart. They say that they implicitly trust the national investigations, which they consider to be enough.

When a presidential election was held in Venezuela and its results showed that President Nicolas Maduro had been re-elected, none other than Berlin and other EU countries officially questioned them and demanded that the organisation of the election be investigated. So, Germany had an interest in an election held in Venezuela, on the other side of the ocean, and demanded an investigation. But the explosion of a critical infrastructure facility on the territory of Germany, which was built to ensure Germany’s socioeconomic and industrial well-being, is modestly swept under the carpet because you must not hurt Washington’s feelings, and you must do whatever the United States tells you to do. It is regrettable that Europe and Germany, which used to be its leader, have fully reconciled themselves to their subordinate position. We want all facts to be honestly investigated rather than swept under the carpet.

The Kiev regime terrorises its western neighbours. I am certain that a Ukrainian trace is sure to be found or invented in the matter of Nord Stream explosions. The main executors are the countries with a relevant technological potential. What the Ukrainians do on their own is to blackmail Hungary and Slovakia. These countries are taking an even-handed position and are not following on the heels of Ursula von der Leyen in her Destroy Russia campaign.

A month ago, Ukraine stopped the transit of Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary via the southern Druzhba pipeline. It just upped and stopped it, although there are contracts and commitments. It is clear that “advice” from Kiev’s Western patrons came into the picture so as to bring pressure to bear on Budapest and Bratislava in connection with their independent position that implies a refusal to rush advanced weapons to Ukraine. Political scientists in these countries honestly explain to their voters what is happening in Ukraine. Recently, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico said firmly: the fact that Ukrainian soldiers fight under Nazi standards and wear Nazi chevrons was unacceptable. Generally, the Nazi instincts transpire not only in their battle fatigues but also in their actions. You have just seen how they fired point-blank at blindfolded prisoners of war with tied hands.  In response, a Ukrainian Defence Ministry official tried to accuse Robert Fico of slandering the “honest and noble Ukrainian servicemen,” whom the former president, Zelensky, had just advertised on the screen as a model to be emulated by all armies in the world for their caring, almost paternal attitude to prisoners. You have just witnessed what is happening in reality.

The Kiev regime continues to terrorise its own citizens as well. On August 20 of this year, they approved a bill that actually outlaws (with several months delay) the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is the “finale” in the persecution of the canonical Church. Radical thugs have attacked churches and beaten up parishioners and priests for months. The authorities have repeatedly expropriated UOC property and handed it over to the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine, an artificial organisation created by former President Poroshenko in 2018. For this, he specially visited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (the latter styles himself as Patriarch of Constantinople, but he “works” in Istanbul).  This operation was carried out with direct support from US representatives, including their special envoy for religious freedom. To ensure the freedom of religion, he made the Ukrainian president, along with the Phanar-based “patriarch,” start a movement towards banning and destroying the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They have created an artificial organisation that currently has only a small number of followers. But if the Ukrainian people put up resistance, it is necessary to ban the canonical Church once and for all. Priests were imprisoned and stripped of citizenship. The Kiev regime is involved in a struggle against everything related to the Russian World.

Russian-speaking ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens, are the most discriminated group. Not only them. Belarussians and Ukrainians who want to speak Russian are discriminated as well. There are many such people there – Armenians, Jews, Greeks and representatives of other ethnic minorities.

Now laws have been passed, whereby it is forbidden to teach children in their native language, to speak it in practically all areas of life. It is excluded from television, radio broadcasting; books is withdrawn from libraries, recycled and destroyed. Fines are expected for those who communicate in languages other than Ukrainian. People are being fired from work. Violent harassment by nationalists is by no means a rare case. All these measures are adopted with particular zeal against the Russian ethnic minority. Although it is still written in the Constitution of Ukraine that the Ukrainian state guarantees the Russian (mentioned individually) and other national minorities all their rights, including educational, linguistic, cultural, etc. The Constitution is not being honoured.

As Ukraine is being dragged with great difficulty into the European Union, it realises that not only does it fail to meet the criteria, it pursues a totally opposite line. In the adopted “road map” for Ukraine, the EU has written down that it should ensure the observance of its Constitutional provisions on national minorities. I think it is a bold step by the European Union because they have come to the point, the very heart of what the Kiev regime is doing.

Notwithstanding the terrorist acts, ban and extermination of everything Russian in Ukraine and discriminating against other national minorities, the West, the United States and the European Union continue to pump huge sums of money into this war, which they are waging by Ukrainian hands against the Russian Federation. Washington has provided Ukraine with 175 billion dollars since February 2022. This is three times more than Washington has spent on foreign aid to all states in the 2024 fiscal year.

The same figures also characterise the EU’s assistance. It has transferred over 80 billion euros to the Kiev regime. And the developing and the least developed countries will receive 110 billion euros over eight years to help them, which is several times less than the West’s clients in Kiev are entitled to receive.

The importance of adhering to international law is being widely discussed, and numerous initiatives to this end have been advanced by, among others, the countries represented here. Everyone is talking about international law, emphasising that any kind of resolution must rely on international law and the UN Charter and, above all, on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Appealing to international law is not a new tool used by Kiev which has long been trying to articulate accusations against us, claiming that Russia violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and that, as one of the four signatory countries guaranteeing Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity, we were the first to break international law.

We began hearing such rhetoric after the February 2014 coup in Ukraine. First, do not distort the status of documents and their international legal content. We note that Kiev grossly violated its obligations when it carried out a coup that was made possible by the United States and the United Kingdom. The coup was not accepted or recognised by a large part of the Ukrainians, who declared their independence and refused to obey the putschists who then launched an anti-terrorist operation against them. You are aware of that. The point is that the 2014 coup violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity which fact every lawyer is well aware of.

Second, Kiev has for many years been introducing Ukrainian ultranationalism into the daily life of the country and discriminating against numerous ethnic minorities. The Joint Statement adopted by the leaders of Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ukraine upon the signing of the Budapest Memorandum notes that the memorandum was concluded within the context of confirming the commitments assumed under the CSCE  in order to “counter the rise of aggressive nationalism and chauvinism.”

This is not our fault, either. We did not lead Ukraine off the path of neutrality and non-aligned status. The only thing the Budapest Memorandum guaranteed Ukraine (as it did with regard to any other non-nuclear state) was that the nuclear states which signed the memorandum would not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. There were no other obligations. This was reiterated when Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence, which remains in effect, solemnly promised to remain a non-aligned state and not to join NATO or any other military-political alliance.

We have never committed to continuing to uphold the Budapest Memorandum regardless of the state coup or the abrupt changes in Ukraine’s actions in Europe and, most importantly, with regard to the Russian Federation.

We are committed to settling the crisis. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly confirmed this, including at the Eastern Economic Forum, where he mentioned the statement that he had made in his June 14 speech at the Foreign Ministry. However, we have yet to see genuine willingness to pursue honest diplomacy from the other side.

I have already mentioned the Burgenstock process today. The West is trying in all its ways to hold Ukraine in the ultimatum framework. As our Arab friends say – there is no God but Allah. The West has no negotiation proposals but for the Zelensky formula. This comparison is not correct but it is necessary to understand how they cling to this unacceptable, deadlocked document and how they try by means of deceit and threats to drag as many countries of the Global South as possible to these “get-togethers” around the Zelensky formula and its individual parts.

On September 11, Kiev hosted another “meeting” – the fourth Crimea Platform Summit. They adopted a joint statement on the results of the meeting. We saw nothing new in it.

The organisers of the Burgenstock summit are trying to implant the Сrimea Platform into the Burgenstock or Copenhagen process and form an anti-Russian coalition on this basis.

Speaking at that Platform yesterday, Mr Zelensky said, “We are relentlessly approaching the time when Ukrainian Crimea and other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine will be liberated from the occupants, and we will be able to fully engage in the reintegration of the peninsula.” What “reintegration” meant, he did not spell out, but he has talked about it many times before. His cronies have also talked about how they see the “reintegration” of Crimea and other territories that have turned their backs on them.

Long before our special military operation on August 5, 2021, Zelensky said in an interview that was widely circulated: “If you live in Ukraine, including the occupied territories of Donbass, and consider yourself Russian and involved in Russian culture, it is a big mistake to stay there. There will be no civilisation on this territory (in Crimea and Donbass) without Ukraine...”. Doesn't this remind you of anything? The “superior race” in the 1930s proclaimed that it alone could bring civilisation to the people of Europe. And in this case both Crimea and Donbass will have no civilization without Ukraine.

Vladimir Zelensky went on to say as follows: “For the sake of the future of your children and grandchildren, if you love Russia and have lived your whole life in Ukraine feeling connected to Russian culture, you must understand that for the sake of your children and grandchildren, it's time to pack your things and leave these territories for Russia.” This is a blatant case of ethnic cleansing.

Similarly, but thankfully without serious armed clashes, various administrative methods are now being used to slowly squeeze Serbs out of Kosovo. A similar plan was held by the Nazis who holed up in Kiev.

On May 19, 2022, adviser to the head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak stated that he supported the idea of having the Kharkov, Lugansk, and Donetsk regions completely forget the word “Russian.”

On November 20, 2023, Verkhovnaya Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said there were no and cannot be Russian ethnic minorities in Ukraine. This was said by the parliament speaker who, along with the president, is supposed to uphold the Constitution. As I earlier mentioned, the Constitution guarantees the rights of the Russian and other ethnic minorities.

On June 24, Mikhail Podolyak discussed their plans to “reintegrate” Crimea: “There may be no “beaches,” “tourist areas,” or other fictitious signs of “peaceful life” in Crimea.” In other words, there may be no civilian sites in Crimea. According to him, Crimea is a large military camp and an ammunition depot. Allegedly, there are a huge number of military targets in Crimea that the Russians are trying to disguise as civilian, and the civilians living in Crimea are nothing more than civilian occupiers.

This is along the lines of what the Nazi coup leaders were saying in 2014. The people who rejected their unconstitutional coup were declared terrorists, and an anti-terrorist operation was launched against them. They are doing the same right now as they kill civilians and attack schools, hospitals, and administrative buildings in the Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions from air and artillery under the motto “Death to Russians.”

A couple of years ago, there was an incident that we discussed with our Kazakhstani friends. In an interview (which was broadcast), the Ukrainian ambassador to Kazakhstan Petr Vrublevsky stated that their main goal was to kill as many Russians as possible now, so that fewer will have to be killed by their children later.

Anyone who wants to understand what the leaders of the Kiev regime have in store for the residents of Crimea and other regions that they want to “return” to their “1991 borders” should know that they are planning exactly what I just said. They are not hiding it. If they are saying this, rest assured they will carry out their plans with much more cruelty than they show in their words.

In this context, speaking yesterday at the Crimean Platform, Vladimir Zelensky said that the people of Ukraine who currently reside in the occupied territories remain the most valuable asset for his regime. I’m not sure what to think about this.”

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