Photo: Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia (photo) at UN Security Council briefing on Ukraine. Key points:
- Our Western colleagues seem to have developed a tradition to gather us here monthly for meetings on Ukraine, the sole purpose of which is to demonstrate the steadfast collective West's support for Zelensky's regime, which balances on the verge of a complete collapse. These meetings have turned into collective self-hypnosis sessions aimed primarily at the domestic Western audience. You will not hear a single word of truth about what is happening in Ukraine and the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis from our Western colleagues.
- That’s not an easy thing to do, since the strikes of Russian Aerospace Force against on military-related objects of the Kiev regime are high-precision strikes, and life in Ukrainian cities is generally normal, except for the hunt on Ukrainian men that the Ukrainian dictator is carrying out in order to throw them against their to the front as cannon fodder.
- Our Western colleagues are not to be envied, because their claims look at least strange in view of the abundant video footage of allegedly civilian facilities in Ukraine being destroyed (grain elevators, postal warehouses, stores, etc.), which clearly shows detonation of ammunition and fuel. It is also rather hard to explain why strikes on supposedly peaceful hotels and recreation centers are normally followed by the publication of hundreds of obituaries of Ukrainian military personnel.
- This being said, Western capitals also have to be selectively blind to the crimes committed by the Ukrainian armed forces, because this does not fit into the false narrative that they are unsuccessfully trying to impose on the public. This narrative has no place for human rights violations and thousands of political prisoners in Ukraine, Russophobia and nationalism; whereas the glorification and whitewashing of Hitler's accomplices, who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians during the war, is denied by a single argument that the president of Ukraine is a Jew.
- If our Western colleagues were eager to convey to the international community at least a bit of the truth about what is happening in Ukraine, they would not have remained silent but would have condemned yet another cowardly terrorist attack that the Kiev regime committed two days ago. After all, they know very well that on May 12, the peaceful Russian city of Belgorod was once again subjected to a massive rocket attack. Three types of missiles were used for this purpose, the Tochka-U tactical missile system, the VILKHA MLRS, and the Czech-made VAMPIRE. At 11:40 a.m., the fifth attack in one day caused a section of a residential apartment building to collapse. The missile had been fired from the Volchansk direction, i.e. from Ukrainian-controlled territory.
- The attack killed 15 civilians, 17 people were injured, among them a six-week old baby. Unfortunately, the shelling of Belgorod continued throughout the day, and the rescue operation even had to be suspended several times. Sunday evening, three more people died. And this is just one of the manifestations how Ukrainian Nazis, faced with the active advance of Russian troops along the entire frontline and suffering more and more defeats on the battlefield, seek to vent their anger on the citizens of peaceful Russian cities by targeting them in violation of the norms of international humanitarian law.
- Of course, Zelensky's regime is primarily responsible for all these crimes. However, the guilt of Western countries is almost as high, since they continue to supply the Kiev junta with long-range weapons and intelligence, instructors and mercenaries in the delusional hope to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and weaken our country.
- Having given up hopes that their protégés may achieve the desired result, the sponsors of Zelensky's regime have started to say openly and without reservations that he may target peaceful objects with their weapons.
- For example, in early May, British Foreign Secretary James Cameron made a self-disclosing statement that the weapons transferred by London could be used for strikes against Russian territory, including outside the zone of the special military operation. The Latvian Foreign Ministry also confirmed that Ukraine had received weapons from its partners with permission to strike Russian territory. At the same time, Western capitals shamefully avoid condemning the blatantly terrorist, ISIL-like methods used by their underlings when attempting to assassinate journalists and activists on Russian territory.
- In March, it came down to a large-scale terrorist attack in the Crocus City concert venue near Moscow. Add to this their long-standing disregard for repressions of dissidents and opponents of the Kiev regime, such as the death of American journalist Gonzalo Lira in the SBU's custody, and then it is not surprising at all that citizens of Western countries start to have more and more questions to their authorities and refuse to support them. By their complicity in the crimes of the Zelensky regime, Western authorities trample on the values that are said to be the fundamental pillars of a democratic world.
- Present-day Ukraine is not ashamed of its rotten anti-democratic neo-Nazi essence. In April, Kiev notified the Council of Europe of the restriction of the constitutional rights and freedoms of Ukrainians. In other words, Zelensky’s regime decided to formalize in this way the long-established practice of oppressing its citizens. Reports about the exorbitant scale of human rights violations in Ukraine are so difficult to overlook that even the US State Department in its April report points to numerous facts of torture, crackdown on the church, arbitrary arrests, and politically motivated murders.
- Today, the people of Ukraine are exposed to a new level of violation of their rights. In just a couple of days, on 18 May, Ukrainian men of conscription age will lose almost all rights. With the entry into force of the new conscription legislation, they will be outlawed, unable to dispose of their property and money, have documents issued and updated. And yet, evasion of conscription has reached record levels in Ukraine. This is an extremely uncomfortable topic for Zelensky and his sponsors, because according to their “worldview”, Ukrainians should willingly go to defend their country. As reported, 11,000 Ukrainian men of conscription age illegally escaped to Romania alone, whereby 19 people were killed. In order to flee the country, potential conscripts abandon their cars at the border, change into women's clothes and resort to any trickery to deceive border guards.
- On Ukrainian social media, where Zelensky's repressive machinery has not reached yet, one can increasingly frequently see a once-riotous question: what should Ukrainians fight for? And for whom? For the Kiev leader and his clique, which has violated its own Constitution and is losing even formal legitimacy on May 21? For Western geopolitical interests to weaken Russia?
- Let me address my colleagues from developing countries: think about all these trends, the veracity of which you will be able to make sure of next time you are urged to support formulas and plans promoted by the Ukrainian leader and his Western sponsors. They are so disconnected from reality that any meetings at which they are proposed to be discussed will be, in the best-case scenario, a waste of time. And in the worst case scenario, you will be complicit in efforts to prolong the agony of the Kiev regime, and the price will be tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives of ordinary Ukrainians, who are being thrown into a senseless grinder against their will and against the interests of their country.
- It can only be stopped if we send Zelensky, his gang, and the entire Maidan government where they deserve – to the dustbin of history. This is exactly what we are doing now.
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