Despite the huge number of affected people and infrastructure, the UN launches only a $397 million humanitarian appeal to aid Syria.
Residents and rescue teams searching for survivors under the rubble in northwest Syria (AFP)
The United Nations on Wednesday said $5.6 billion was needed to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and to the millions who have fled the country after the start of the war, a day after it announced a $397 million humanitarian appeal to aid quake-hit Syria.
The UN estimated that 21.8 million Ukrainians were now in need of humanitarian assistance.
“The war continues to cause death, destruction and displacement daily, and on a staggering scale,” UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement.
“We must do all we can to reach the hardest-to-reach communities, including those close to the front line,” Griffiths stressed, adding that “the suffering of the Ukrainian people is far from over – they continue to need international support.”
The UN said the requested $5.6 billion would allow it to reach the 15.3 million people in most dire need this year.
A full $1.7 billion of that amount was needed for assistance to the more than four million Ukrainian refugees hosted across eastern Europe, it highlighted.
Most of that would go to Poland, which is hosting more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, and Moldova, the main transit country for Ukrainians making their way further into Europe.
According to the UN, women and children account for around 86% of the overall refugee population.
“Europe has proven capable of bold, collective action to help refugees,” UN Refugee Chief Filippo Grandi said in the statement.
“We must not, however, take this response, or the hospitality of host communities, for granted,” Grandi considered.
He added that “continued international support and solidarity is needed, until refugees are able to return to their homes in safety and dignity, which must also remain a priority.”
Since the war began, humanitarian organizations in Ukraine have been working to reach people across the country, with nearly 16 million receiving aid and protection services in 2022.
Inside Ukraine, “the war has profoundly affected access to livelihoods and disrupted market stability particularly in southern and eastern oblasts, further aggravating humanitarian suffering,” the appeal indicated.
It warned that “a majority of Ukrainians have reportedly reduced food consumption and spent savings,” pointing to soaring unemployment, skyrocketing inflation, and inadequate social assistance.
On the other hand, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the launch of a $397 million humanitarian appeal to aid Syria in the wake of the devastating earthquake, which has so far resulted in around 6,000 deaths.
“The Syria effort brings together the entire UN system and humanitarian partners and will help secure desperately needed, life-saving relief for nearly 5 million Syrians – including shelter, healthcare, food and protection,” Guterres told reporters as the appeal was launched.
According to the UN, the Flash Appeal will ensure assistance to the people with the most urgent humanitarian needs, covering an initial period of three months, until May.
“We all know that lifesaving aid has not been getting in at the speed and scale needed. The scale of this disaster is one of the worst in recent memory,” the UN Secretary-General highlighted.
“I have an urgent message to the international community: The human suffering from this epic natural disaster should not be made even worse by manmade obstacles — access, funding, supplies,” Guterres stressed, urging UN member states “and others to fully fund this effort without delay and help the millions of children, women and men whose lives have been upended by this generational disaster.”
“This is a moment for unity, for common humanity and concerted action,” he concluded.
According to the UN, 8.8 million people have been affected by the earthquake and its aftershocks in Syria. More than 4.2 million people have been affected by the earthquake in Aleppo, while 3 million people have been affected in Idlib, the UN noted, adding that more than 7,400 buildings have been entirely or partially destroyed.
The UN also estimated that up to 5.3 million people in Syria may have been made homeless as a result of the earthquake and its aftershocks.
While Syria clearly needs more than $394 million to rise from the aftermath of the earthquake, it remains dependent on aid sent from friendly countries.
UN admits: ‘We have failed the people in northwest Syria’
This comes as the UN pointed out on Sunday that the international community has so far abandoned Syrians as they struggle to secure basic needs and aid to respond to the devastating earthquake that struck the country.
Griffiths said although a convoy of supplies was delivered by the organization to northwest Syria through Turkey, the effort was not enough as millions more have been impacted by the catastrophe.
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” he tweeted.
“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can. That’s my focus now,” Griffiths indicated.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. (Photo: via Facebook)
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated on Monday that “all of Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law and a substantial obstacle to peace.”
Guterres made his comment as he expressed his deep concern about the Israeli government’s announcement that it is “legalizing” nine settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
Such outposts are illegal under international and even Israeli law.
“If these measures are implemented, they would further undermine prospects for a viable two-state solution,” Guterres’s spokesman told journalists.
The UN head called for an end to unilateral measures that undermine prospects for a political solution on the basis of UN resolutions, international law, and bilateral agreements.
The first United Nations aid deliveries arrived on Thursday in areas controlled by militants in Syria.
Rescuers in Turkey searching for earthquake survivors (AP)
Rescuers were scouring debris on Friday nearly 100 hours after the 7.8-magnitude massive earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, killing more than 21,000 people in one of the region’s worst disasters for a century.
The first United Nations aid deliveries arrived on Thursday in areas controlled by militants in Syria, but chances of finding survivors have dimmed since the passing of the three-day mark that experts consider a critical period to save lives.
Top aid officials were planning to visit affected areas with World Health Organization Head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and UN humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths both announcing trips.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, said she had arrived in Aleppo.
“Communities struggling after years of fierce fighting are now crippled by the earthquake,” Spoljaric tweeted on Wednesday.
“As this tragic event unfolds, people’s desperate plight must be addressed,” she stressed.
On his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to authorize the opening of new cross-border humanitarian aid points between Turkey and Syria.
“This is the moment of unity, it’s not a moment to politicise or to divide but it is obvious that we need massive support,” Guterres said.
Similarly, Geir Pedersen, the UN Special Envoy for Syria stressed on Thursday the need to avoid “politicization” of aid to earthquake victims in Syria and urged Washington and Brussels to ensure there were “no impediments”.
Exclusive: Syrian government sending aid to armed-groups-held areas
In the same context, Syrian informed sources told Al Mayadeen on Thursday that a convoy carrying Syrian aid is preparing to enter Idlib through the Saraqib border crossing and is currently waiting for UN representatives to hand over the relief aid to Idlib.
The sources said that if international organizations are late, Syria will not hesitate to deliver this aid by itself to help the disaster-stricken people.
“The negotiations were fruitful, and aid is on the way,” they added.
According to Al Mayadeen sources, the UAE had been negotiating for the past three days with militants in Idlib to open the crossings to allow the entry of aid.
“The militats were finally convinced with an aid convoy making it into Idlib through the Syrian Red Crescent and international organizations in Syria,” the sources added.
“The militants want to garner international support for themselves alone under the pretext that the Syrian government would not allow aid to make it into their areas,” the sources indicated.
Al Mayadeen correspondent also reported that “there is an aid convoy preparing to enter Idlib.”
“The aid convoy will make it through the UN path through the Saraqib crossing,” and “the efforts of the militants to get aid into Idlib through the Turkish borders have all been met with failure.”
Freezing temperatures
In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, located near the epicenter of the quake, temperatures plunged to minus three degrees Celsius (26 degrees Fahrenheit) early on Friday.
Despite the cold, thousands of families had to spend the night in cars and makeshift tents — too scared or banned from returning to their homes.
Gyms, mosques, schools, and some stores have opened at night. But beds are scarce and thousands spend the nights in cars with engines running to provide heat.
Monday’s quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939 when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.
In addition to 3,377 deaths in Syria, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said the death toll from the earthquake in Turkey has reached 18,342, while 74,242 have been injured, bringing the confirmed total to more than 21,000 deaths.
Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply. Despite the difficulties, thousands of local and foreign searchers have not given up the hunt for more survivors.
On a visit to the area, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted there had been “shortcomings” in the government’s handling of the disaster.
Relief pledges
The World Bank said it would give $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey to help with relief and recovery efforts. Immediate assistance of $780 million will be offered from two existing projects in Turkey, said the bank, while an added $1 billion in operations is being prepared to support affected people.
In Syria, the General Director of the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA), Basem Mansour, revealed that the countries that have started sending aid planes so far are: UAE, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Armenia, Algeria, Iraq, Oman, Egypt, Venezuela, Jordan, Libya, and Tunisia.
Amid complete silence from the #West, some countries actually stepped up and answered Syria's humanitarian cry for help.
Earlier, the US Treasury Department announced a temporary lifting of some Syria-related sanctions following calls from the Syrian state and the international community in the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude that struck Syria and Turkey.
This comes right after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit both Turkey and Syria, leaving thousands dead.
People looking for survivors on a collapsed building in Idlib, Syria on Monday (AP)
A new earthquake hit Turkey again at a magnitude of 5.3, which comes right after Monday’s earthquake left a death toll of 2,921 in Turkey with 15,834 injured, according to a Turkish news agency on Tuesday, citing the Turkish disaster and emergency management authority (AFAD).
Russia sent teams to assist Turkey and Syria, with multiple other countries such as Iran and Iraq also sending aid to the region.
Syria requested on Monday that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres send all resources available to help the country already dealing with a harsh and unjust blockade by the US, which is prohibiting medical resources from reaching citizens.
The major 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, has killed more than 3,000 people and flattened thousands of buildings as rescuers dug with their bare hands for survivors.
Multi-story apartment buildings full of residents were among the 5,606 structures reduced to rubble in Turkey, while Syria announced dozens of collapses, as well as damage to archaeological sites in Aleppo.
The head of Syria’s National Earthquake Center, Raed Ahmad, called it “the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the center.”
The initial quake was followed by dozens of aftershocks, including a 7.5-magnitude tremor that shook the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in a phone call on Monday that Russian rescuers will depart toward Syria today in order to provide all required assistance and support following the devastating earthquake that struck the West Asian country and Turkey.
“In the nearest hours, rescuers from the Russian emergency ministry will take off for Syria,” the Kremlin said.
Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. The country’s last 7.8-magnitude tremor was in 1939 when 33,000 died in the eastern Erzincan province.
The Turkish region of Duzce suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in 1999 when more than 17,000 people died.
A baby born somewhere on Tuesday was the world’s 8 billionth person, a United Nations’ projection was eager to announce!
“The milestone is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
However, the UN chief’s mischief goes beyond this responsibility…
While busy counting the number of living humans on Earth, the WORLD body, whether on purpose or not, forgot about other humans who happen to be in Yemen, Palestine, and several other uncovered places on this planet.
The UN didn’t do its homework very well. The organization would have gained more respect had it done the math the way it ought to be.
Just two days later, an official with Yemen’s Health Ministry sounded the alarm that more than 80 newborn babies lose their lives on a daily basis because the war-torn country does not have the required medical equipment due to the Saudi-led war and blockade.
Najeeb al-Qubati, the undersecretary of Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population for the Population Sector, announced that some 39% of babies are born premature, which shows a significant increase compared to the pre-war period.
The official said the use of prohibited weapons was one of the reasons behind the growing trend. He said several human rights organizations have already acknowledged and condemned Saudis for using such arms.
Yemeni medical centers are in need of some 2,000 incubators, he said, noting that 632 incubators have been provided so far.
Since launching the war with the support of Washington in March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition has used internationally-banned weapons, including US-made cluster bombs, to target residential areas, according to the Cluster Munition Monitor.
Apart from the war, Saudi Arabia has imposed a blockade on Yemen which, combined, have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The military aggression has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including the health sector.
On Wednesday, the Yemeni Health Ministry said mosquito-borne diseases such as Malaria and dengue have been on the rise since the start of the war.
Speaking at a press conference in al-Huadaydah, Muhammad al-Mansour, the undersecretary of Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population for the Primary Care Sector, said war and blockade were two main reasons behind the increase of epidemics and diseases in the country.
Failure to implement to malaria control program led to a rise in cases from 513,000 in 2015 to 1,100,000 in 2019, he said, noting the rate was higher in areas where citizens were displaced such as in al-Hudaydah.
Malaria and dengue fever claimed the lives of more than 260,000 Yemenis between 2015 and 2019, he said, naming the closure of ports which has led to delays in the arrival of equipment and medicine as one of the leading factors.
In September, Yemen’s al-Masirah television network reported that the Ministry of Public Health and Population had confirmed the Saudi-led blockade had raised acute malnutrition cases to more than 632,000 children under the age of five and 1.5 million pregnant and lactating women.
“The siege and intense bombardment with prohibited weapons caused a high rate of congenital abnormalities and miscarriages, with an average of 350,000 miscarriages and 12,000 malformations,” it said. According to the ministry, the siege led to an eight-percent increase in premature births compared to the situation before the war.
The blockade has also increased the number of cancer patients by 50 percent. The figure showed 46,204 cases registered during the year 2021.
The ministry said the Saudi-led war had destroyed 162 health facilities completely or 375 partially and put them out of work.
The objective of the war was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
Not only has the Saudi-led coalition failed to meet its objectives, it has also killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and created what the UN calls the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis.”
Related Videos
Saudi Arabia and Yemen war, where to?.. Yemen developments
European Parliament, which is investigating the use of “Israeli” spyware by EU governments, has slammed the Tel Aviv regime for a lack of transparency in allowing the sale of Pegasus to European governments to use it against critics.
The European lawmakers condemned the approach of the Polish government for refusing to meet and talk with them during the meeting of the fact-finding committee in Warsaw, which ended on Wednesday.
“It is regrettable and we condemn the fact that the Polish authorities did not want to cooperate with our investigation committee,” Jeroen Lenaers, the head of the delegation, said at a news conference in Warsaw.
“We think it also is a telling sign of the complete lack of importance this government attaches to checks and balances, to democratic scrutiny, and to dialog with elected representatives.”
The European Union’s fact-finding committee is investigating the use of the entity’s Pegasus spyware and other invasive surveillance tools by the European governments, saying the technology poses a serious threat to democracy in European countries.
Pegasus is “Israeli” spyware that was designed and developed by the entity’s NSO group and is used to break into mobile phones and spy on a large part of personal information including text messages, passwords, locations, and microphone and camera receivers.
The “Israeli” company marketed this technology as a tool to target its desired targets in the world.
Many European governments have used this controversial software to suppress dissidents, journalists, and political opponents around the world.
In Europe, some cyber detectives have found traces of the use of Pegasus or some other spyware in Poland, Hungary, Spain, and Greece.
Sophie in ’t Veld, the rapporteur of the inquiry, said the committee found out in its research that the NSO group sold this spyware to 14 European Union member states with official permission from Tel Aviv.
According to reports, Poland and Hungary are not allowed to buy this spyware from NSO due to some political issues, details of which remain unclear.
“Why can we not say with certainty that Poland was one of the two countries of which the contract has been terminated?” she said.
“Why is it that NSO is allowed to operate in the European Union, conduct its finances through Luxembourg, sell its products to now 12 member states, products that have been used to violate the rights of European citizens and to attack democracy of the European Union?”
Recently, Greece revealed that Nikos Androulakis, a member of the European Parliament and the head of the third largest political party in Greece, was monitored using Predator software last year when he was running for the leadership of the PASOK party.
It is said that a journalist from Mali was also under surveillance.
Recently, it was revealed that Poland, Hungary, and some Catalan separatists in Spain were using this software to suppress their critics and opponents.
The 10-member delegation of the EU’s fact-finding committee during its trip that began on Monday met with Poles targeted by the Pegasus spyware, including a prosecutor and a senator, and some members of the opposition-controlled Senate.
A report of the obtained results as well as some recommendations and solutions are supposed to be published on November 8 of this year.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned of the threat posed by spying programs such as the Pegasus spyware to UN human rights activists in a report to be released next week.
In recent days, Pegasus and some other spyware have threatened a group of UN human rights activists.
Guterres warned that the increase in digital surveillance by governments and some non-governmental sources has affected the activities of civil society activists in providing reliable information to the world body and has made them vulnerable to fear and threats of retaliation.
“United Nations actors have pointed to growing and concerning evidence of online surveillance, privacy intrusion, and cyberattacks by state and non-state actors of victims and civil society communications and activities,” the UN chief noted.
“The lack of trust in the digital sphere among those sharing information and testimony with the United Nations on sensitive issues can discourage future cooperation.”
The findings are part of an annual report that tracks the challenges facing those seeking to work with the organization and focuses on April 2021 to May 2022.
During this period, much of the UN’s activities following the Covid-19 pandemic have gone digital, and at the same time, espionage threats have increased.
According to UN officials, this software has also spied on the activities of Palestinian, Bahraini, and Moroccan organizations and some human rights activists of the UN during this period.
In his recent report, Guterres warned that in 2021, the mobile phones of employees of three prominent Palestinian NGOs – Addameer, Al-Haq, and Bisan Center for Research and Development – were hacked using Pegasus spyware.
The “Israeli” NSO Group has earned notoriety for trying to have its spy apparatuses maintain an edge over their international counterparts.
The regime makes extensive use of Pegasus and other locally-made spyware for espionage.
According to observers, Tel Aviv has treated NSO as a de-facto arm of the regime, granting licenses for the sale of the spyware to countries to forge stronger security and diplomatic ties.
In January, the New York Times reported that the FBI had purchased Pegasus software in 2019.
It also stated that in 2018 the CIA had purchased Pegasus for the government of Djibouti to conduct counterterrorism operations, despite that country’s record of torturing political opposition figures and imprisoning journalists.
Forget development. Washington’s primary interest in Africa today is keeping the Chinese and Russians out.
In a rational environment, the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) would discuss alleviating the trials and tribulations of the Global South, especially Africa.
That won’t be the case. Like a deer caught in the geopolitical headlights, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued platitudes about a gloomy “winter of global discontent,” even as the proverbial imperial doomsayers criticized the UN’s “crisis of faith” and blasted the “unprovoked war” started by Russia.
Of course the slow-motion genocide of Donbass russophone residents for eight years would never be recognized as a provocation.
Guterres spoke of Afghanistan, “where the economy is in ruins and human rights are being trampled” – but he did not dare to offer context. In Libya, “divisions continue to jeopardize the country” – once again, no context. Not to mention Iraq, where “ongoing tensions threaten ongoing stability.”
Africa has 54 nations as UN members. Any truly representative UNGA meeting should place Africa’s problems at the forefront. Once again, that’s not the case. So it is left to African leaders to offer that much-needed context outside of the UN building in New York.
As the only African member of the G20, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently urged the US not to “punish” the whole continent by forcing nations to demonize or sanction Russia. Washington’s introduction of legislation dubbed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, he says, “will harm Africa and marginalize the continent.”
South Africa is a BRICS member – a concept that is anathema in the Beltway – and embraces a policy of non-alignment among world powers. An emerging 21st century version of the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is strengthening across the Global South – and especially Africa – much to the revulsion of the US and its minions.
Back at the UNGA, Guterres invoked the global fertilizer crisis – again, with no context. Russian diplomacy has repeatedly stressed that Moscow is ready to export 30 million tons of grain and over 20 million tons of fertilizer by the end of 2022. What is left unsaid in the west, is that only the importation of fertilizers to the EU is “allowed,” while transit to Africa is not.
Guterres said he was trying to persuade EU leaders to lift sanctions on Russian fertilizer exports, which directly affect cargo payments and shipping insurance. Russia’s Uralchem, for instance, even offered to supply fertilizers to Africa for free.
Yet from the point of view of the US and its EU vassals, the only thing that matters is to counter Russia and China in Africa. Senegal’s President Macky Sall has remarked how this policy is leaving “a bitter taste.”
‘We forbid you to build your pipeline’
It gets worse. The largely ineffectual EU Parliament now wants to stop the construction of the 1,445 km-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) from Uganda to Tanzania, invoking hazy human rights violations, environmental threats, and “advising” member countries to simply drop out of the project.
Uganda is counting on more than 6 billion barrels of oil to sustain an employment boom and finally move the nation to middle-income status. It was up to Ugandan Parliament Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa to offer much-needed context:
“It is imprudent to say that Uganda’s oil projects will exacerbate climate change, yet it is a fact that the EU block with only 10 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 25 percent of global emissions, and Africa with 20 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 3 percent of emissions. The EU and other western countries are historically responsible for climate change. Who then should stop or slow down the development of natural resources? Certainly not Africa or Uganda.”
The EU Parliament, moreover, is a staunch puppet of the biofuel lobby. It has refused to amend a law that would have stopped the use of food crops for fuel production, actually contributing to what the UN Food Program has described as “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude.” No less than 350 million people are on the brink of starvation across Africa.
Instead, the G7’s notion of “helping” Africa is crystallized in the US-led Build Back Better World (B3W) – Washington’s anaemic attempt to counter Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – which focuses on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality,” according to the White House. Practical issues of infrastructure and sustainable development, which are at the heart of China’s plan, are simply ignored by the B3W.
Initially, a few “promising” projects were identified by a traveling US delegation in Senegal and Ghana. Senegalese diplomatic sources have since confirmed that these projects have nothing whatsoever to do with building infrastructure.
B3W, predictably, fizzled out. After all, the US-led project was little more than a public relations gimmick to undermine the Chinese, with negligible effect on narrowing the $40-plus trillion worth of infrastructure needed to be built across the Global South by 2035.
Have YALI, will travel
Imperial initiatives in Africa – apart from the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which amounts to raw militarization of the continent – brings us to the curious case of YALI (Young African Leaders Initiative), widely touted in the Washington-New York axis as “the most innovative” policy of the Obama years.
Launched in 2010, YALI was framed as “empowering the new generation of Africa leadership” – a euphemism for educating (or brainwashing) them the American way. The mechanism is simple: investing in and bringing hundreds of young African potential leaders to US universities for a short, six-week “training” on “business, civil leadership, entrepreneurship, and public management.” Then, four days in Washington to meet “leaders in the administration,” and a photo op with Obama.
The project was coordinated by US embassies in Africa, and targeted young men and women from sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 nations – including those under US sanctions, like Sudan, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe – proficient in English, with a “commitment” to return to Africa. Roughly 80 percent during the initial years had never been to the US, and more than 50 percent grew up outside of big cities.
Then, in a speech in 2013 in South Africa, Obama announced the establishment of the Washington Fellowship, later renamed the Mandela-Washington Fellowship (MWF).
That’s still ongoing. In 2022, MWF should be granted to 700 “outstanding young leaders from sub-Saharan Africa,” who follow “Leadership Institutes” at nearly 40 US universities, before their short stint in Washington. After which, they are ready for “long-term engagement between the United States and Africa.”
And all that for literally peanuts, as MWF was enthusiastically billed by the Democrat establishment as cost-efficient: $24,000 per fellow, paid by participant US universities as well as Coca-Cola, IBM, MasterCard Foundation, Microsoft, Intel, McKinsey, GE, and Procter & Gamble.
And that didn’t stop with MWF. USAID went a step further, and invested over $38 million – plus $10 million from the MasterCard Foundation – to set up four Regional Leadership Centers (RLCs) in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal. These were training, long distance and in-class, at least 3,500 ‘future leaders’ a year.
It’s no wonder the Brookings Institution was drooling over so much “cost-efficiency” when it comes to investing “in Africa’s future” and for the US to “stay competitive” in Africa. YALI certainly looks prettier than AFRICOM.
A few success stories though don’t seem to rival the steady stream of African footballers making a splash in Europe – and then reinvesting most of their profits back home. The Trump years did see a reduction of YALI’s funding – from $19 million in 2017 to roughly $5 million.
So many leaders to ‘train’
Predictably, the Joe Biden White House YALI-ed all over again with a vengeance. Take this US press attache in Nigeria neatly outlining the current emphasis on “media and information literacy,” badly needed to tackle the “spreading of disinformation” including “in the months leading up to the national presidential election.”
So the US, under YALI, “trained 1,000 young Nigerians to recognize the signs of online and media misinformation and disinformation.” And now the follow-up is “Train the Trainer” workshops, “teaching 40 journalists, content creators, and activists (half of whom will be women) from Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Zamfara, and Katsina how to identify, investigate, and report misinformation.” Facebook, being ordered by the FBI to censor “inconvenient,” potentially election-altering facts, is not part of the curriculum.
YALI is the soft, Instagrammed face of AFRICOM. The US has participated in the overthrow of several African governments over the past two decades, with troops trained under secrecy-obsessed AFRICOM. There has been no serious Pentagon audit on the weaponizing of AFRICOM’s local “partners.” For all we know – as in Syria and Libya – the US military could be arming even more terrorists.
And predictably, it’s all bipartisan. Rabid neo-con and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, in December 2018, at the Heritage Foundation, made it crystal clear: the US in Africa has nothing to do with supporting democracy and sustainable development. It’s all about countering Russia and China.
When it learned that Beijing was considering building a naval base in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, the Biden White House sent power envoys to the capital Malabo to convince the government to cease and desist. To no avail.
In contrast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was received like a superstar in his recent extensive tour of Africa, where it’s widely perceived that global food prices and the fertilizer drama are a direct consequence of western sanctions on Russia. Uganda leader Yoweri Museveni went straight to the point when he said, “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us?”
On 13-15 December, the White House plans a major US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington to discuss mostly food security and climate change – alongside the perennial lectures on democracy and human rights. Most leaders won’t be exactly impressed with this new showing of “the United States’ enduring commitment to Africa.” Well, there’s always YALI. So many young leaders to indoctrinate, so little time.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, colleagues,
https://thesaker.is/speech-by-the-president-of-russia-at-an-expanded-meeting-of-the-sco-heads-of-state-council/I fully share the statements made by my colleagues and their positive assessments of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and its growing prestige in international affairs. Indeed, the SCO has become the largest regional organisation in the world. As previous speakers have pointed out, over half of the world’s population lives in SCO member states, which account for about 25 percent of global GDP and have a powerful intellectual and technological potential and a considerable part of global natural resources.
At the same time, the SCO is not marking time but continues to develop and build up its role in addressing international and regional issues and maintaining peace, security and stability throughout the vast Eurasian space. Colleagues, this is especially important in the current complicated international situation, about which we have talked in detail during our restricted-attendance meeting.
However, I would like to repeat that global politics and economy are about to undergo fundamental and irreversible changes. The growing role of new centres of power is coming into sharp focus, and interaction among these new centres is not based on some rules, which are being forced on them by external forces and which nobody has seen, but on the universally recognised principles of the rule of international law and the UN Charter, namely, equal and indivisible security and respect for each other’s sovereignty, national values and interests.
It is on these principles, which are devoid of all elements of egoism, that the joint efforts of SCO member states are based in politics and the economy. This opens up broad prospects for continued mutually beneficial cooperation in politics, the economy, culture, humanitarian and other spheres.
Fighting terrorism and extremism, drug trafficking, organised crime and illegal armed formations remains a priority of our cooperation. Other key areas include providing assistance in the political and diplomatic settlement of conflicts along our external borders, including in Afghanistan.
Strengthening economic cooperation has traditionally been a critical part of the SCO’s activities. Our joint efforts are designed to expand trade and investment exchanges, carry out mutually beneficial business projects in various industries, and to increase the volume of settlements in national currencies.
As noted above, including by the President of Kazakhstan, we are open to working with the whole world. The SCO is a non-bloc association. We help addressing the energy and food problems that are growing globally as a result of certain systemic errors in the world’s leading economies in the field of finance and energy. Our policy is not selfish. We hope that other participants in economic cooperation will build their policies on the same principles and stop using the tools of protectionism, illegal sanctions and economic selfishness to their own advantage.
The European Commission’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian fertilisers is a vivid example of such selfish behaviour. We are aware of the fertilisers’ important role in overcoming the food problem. Of course, we welcome the decision to lift the sanctions. But it turns out that, in accordance with the clarification of the European Commission of September 10, these sanctions were lifted only for EU countries. It turns out that they are the only ones who can purchase our fertilisers. What about the developing poorest countries around the world?
Taking advantage of the presence of UN Under-Secretary-General [Rosemary] DiCarlo, I would like to ask the UN Secretariat – I discussed this matter with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres the day before yesterday – to use its influence on the European Commission’s decision not in word, but in deed and to demand that they, our colleagues from the European Commission, lift these clearly discriminatory restrictions on developing countries and provide access for Russian fertilisers to their markets.
Also, the day before yesterday I apprised Secretary-General Guterres of the fact that 300,000 tonnes of Russian fertilisers are stocked at the EU seaports. We are ready to make them available to developing countries for free.
I would also like to note that Russia is increasing its grain exports to international markets. This year, it is going to be 30 million tonnes, and next year it will be 50 million tonnes with 90 percent of our food exports going to the markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Undoubtedly, the ongoing summit’s decisions and documents to improve the efficiency of international transport corridors, to expand intraregional, to advance industrial and scientific and technical cooperation, and to introduce high-tech solutions in agriculture and healthcare will promote further development of business ties within the SCO.
It is also important to advance cultural and humanitarian cooperation within the SCO.
Agreements and memorandums on cooperation in tourism and museology that will be signed during today’s meeting will serve as the next step forward on this path.
It appears that opportunities are good for stepping up sports cooperation and potentially holding major sporting events with SCO sponsorship. To do this, we could think about creating an association of sports organisations under our association.
Friends,
It was noted earlier today during the restricted-attendance meeting that the SCO states focus on expanding cooperation with countries that seek to establish an open and equal dialogue with our organisation and are interested in joining it. In this context, Russia, no doubt, favours the earliest possible accession of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the SCO, which is what the documents and the memorandum that will be signed today are designed to accomplish. We are convinced that Iran’s full-fledged participation will be beneficial for the association, as that country plays an important role in the Eurasian region and the world at large.
We also fully stand behind the decision submitted for approval by the Heads of State Council to start the process of admitting the Republic of Belarus as an SCO member. Let me be clear that we have always advocated that Belarus, which is Russia’s strategic partner and closest ally, should participate fully in the SCO. This will undoubtedly improve our ability to advance unity in politics, the economy, security and humanitarian matters.
Of course, we welcome the granting of SCO dialogue partner status to Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as the commencement of the procedure for obtaining this status by the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Republic of Maldives, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, and the United Arab Emirates. Notably, there are more countries desirous of cooperating with the SCO in various capacities, and applications from other states and international associations deserve our utmost attention and favourable consideration.
In closing, I would like to thank President Shavkat Mirziyoyev for the hospitality and excellent organisation of our work, and to congratulate Uzbekistan on its successful SCO chairmanship. I would also like to wish every success to our Indian friends who are taking over the chairmanship today.
The entire crisis could have been avoided with much less loss of life if the NATO powers had responded to Russia’s long-held security concerns.
Two weeks ago, the Strategic Culture Foundation proposed an urgent, simple test: stop the artillery shelling on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. The ZNPP – Europe’s largest nuclear power station – continues to come under military attack thereby risking a nuclear catastrophe.
It is an incredible siege situation. And one that illustrates – for anyone willing to see it, that is – the profound criminality of the NATO-backed war in Ukraine against Russia. There is nothing that the NATO powers and their lying media will stoop to. In a related illustration, the British would-be next Prime Minister Liz Truss this week said she was willing to use nuclear weapons even if it caused global annihilation. This is the same psychopathic mentality that the world has to endure from such Western regimes.
This week, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations presented photographic evidence to the Security Council that showed irrefutably that the ZNPP is being shelled by the NATO-backed Kiev regime. The trajectory of fire is from the territory held by the Ukrainian military and the weaponry includes M777 howitzers supplied by the United States.
The Kiev regime’s claims are patently absurd. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claims that Russian forces are attacking the ZNPP despite the obvious fact that the Russian military took over the station in early March, days after it launched its security operation on February 24 to neutralize mounting NATO threats from Ukraine. The Western governments and news media continue to indulge Zelensky’s blatant lie by amplifying the perverse accusations of “self-sabotage” by Russia. The United Nations’ chief António Guterres has also shamefully indulged the nonsense by pretending to “not know the truth” about “conflicting claims”.
There are no “conflicting claims”. It is starkly evident that the NATO-backed Kiev regime is engaging in nuclear terrorism by willfully attacking the ZNPP. NATO and its Ukrainian proxy are using the threat of nuclear catastrophe to demand that Russian forces withdraw from the ZNPP. It is entirely fortunate that Russia’s military secured the ZNPP at an early stage. Otherwise, the Kiev regime and its NATO handlers would have had a free hand to use nuclear blackmail.
Not for the first time, this week the Western powers abused the Security Council by allowing the Ukrainian leader to address the forum. The Council’s rules stipulate that addresses can only be made by in-person attendees. Yet, for the second time, Zelensky was permitted to speak to the Council via video link. His speech was a travesty of lies, accusing Russia of nuclear terrorism among other hysterical claims of causing world hunger and global inflation.
When Russia’s ambassador Vassily Nebenzia took his turn to set the record straight at the Security Council hearing, the Ukrainian leader refused to listen, his video link conveniently cut off.
Nevertheless, the Russian envoy presented the evidence of NATO-backed military strikes on the ZNPP and went on to cogently state that the crisis in Ukraine has been systematically instigated by the NATO powers and its Kiev proxy over the past eight years since the CIA-backed coup in 2014. Nebenzia remarked on how Western powers and the Kiev regime are living in a “parallel reality”.
It is common to hear these days how the world is subjected to a post-truth condition. In plainer language that means a world of lies, falsehoods, distortions, misinformation and disinformation. The crisis in Ukraine, the NATO powers and the Kiev regime are an embodiment of this fiendish reality.
Western regimes accuse Russia of unprovoked aggression in Ukraine. (The same regimes that have slaughtered their way through Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and continue to illegally bomb Syria, to name but a few victim nations.) They declare they are defending sovereignty and democracy. This is a preposterous charade that flies in the face of facts that the Western powers weaponized a Nazi regime in Ukraine to destabilize Russia. (An echo of how they weaponized Hitler’s Third Reich for the same purpose more than eight decades ago.) The Kiev regime has been killing its own people for eight years and committed countless war crimes. The relentless attacks on the ZNPP are totally consistent with the depraved conduct. Elsewhere, the NATO-backed regime has shelled chemical and oil plants in the Donbass territory. The Western media decline to report on these violations because that would reveal the criminal mentality and practice of the Kiev regime and its NATO sponsors.
Russia’s military operation to neutralize the growing NATO threat in Ukraine has been effective. The poisonous boil has been lanced and NATO’s decades-long aggressive expansionism against Russia has been checked. Yet Western media – the propaganda ministry that it is – claim that Russia’s intervention has been a failure. The United States and its NATO allies continue to flood Ukraine with offensive weapons even while the Kiev regime is using nuclear terrorism with these weapons and while Russian forces are destroying the Ukrainian military. That’s not a contradiction; it is a green light for more war and profits for the American military-industrial complex that underpins U.S. capitalism.
The entire crisis could have been avoided with much less loss of life if the NATO powers had responded to Russia’s long-held security concerns. But that assumes the NATO powers would have been interested in avoiding war. The damning conclusion is that the United States and its imperialist allies have always wanted the present war in order to pursue a geopolitical ambition of confronting Russia. In the same way that the U.S.-led axis wants to precipitate a war with China over Taiwan and other bogus issues.
American-led Western capitalism is addicted to war for its own ghoulish survival. A world of peaceful relations is fundamentally anathema to Washington and its vassals. But the ruling regimes can’t very well admit that pernicious motive, so they have to cover up their criminal agenda with deceptions about democracy, rules-based order, human rights and other laughable pretensions. Western media provide the necessary cosmetics for the ghoulish reality. The fact is wars and destruction are the oxygen for U.S. global power and its imperial lackeys. Dozens of wars since World War II waged by the U.S. and its international crime syndicate of NATO accomplices, especially its British henchman, attest to that naked, ugly truth.
The Ukrainian comedian-turned-president Zelensky is a liar and idiot. But he is only a bit-player in a bigger circus of imperial kabuki. His regime has used human shields and civilian centers as cover for its despicable ends. It has committed false-flag massacres in a vile attempt to blame Russia. It has diverted Russian gas from European markets while refusing to pay its energy debts. And it continues to extort Western taxpayers to foot the bill for its depredations – all too willingly obliged by Western regimes. To pay for the global-scale extortion racket, the Western public is being told to take cold showers and get used to “the end of abundance”, as France’s President (and former bankster) Emmanuel Macron haughtily advised this week.
The farce this week at the UN Security Council in which Western powers brazenly snubbed the evidence of their own criminality while giving a platform to Zelensky to peddle his ridiculous lies demonstrates a profound dilemma. Any attempt to engage idiots and liars through reasoned dialogue is doomed to fail. When dialogue and diplomacy are made futile then conflict is made all but inevitable. That dilemma has been a constant hallmark of relations with Western powers for many years. The present crisis in Ukraine is the tragic outcome. Lamentably, more such crises can be expected because the idiots and liars never stop.
Western regimes are collapsing from their own inherent loss of legitimacy. That loss is entirely due to their lies becoming more manifest despite their servile media facade. Collapse can be good. It is incontestably good in the case of ending endemic corruption. The ineffable danger, however, is what Western elites will do to avoid historic collapse. As the NATO-backed Kiev regime is demonstrating through its nuclear terrorism and as Britain’s idiotic politician Liz Truss revealed by her demonic embrace of global annihilation.
🇷🇺The highlights of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Sputnik and RT:
🔹The EU is forced to make amendments to sanctions against Russia as they have exceeded their potential;
🔹Russia is not happy about energy issues that Europe is currently facing, but “will not worry about it too much”;
🔹Western countries are trying to drag UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres into their “games” around Ukrainian grain;
🔹Moscow has sent a signal to Guterres about the need to include a clause on Russian grain in the Istanbul agreements;
🔹It can hardly be in Europe’s interests to fully cut off ties with Russia and switch to liquefied natural gas supplies from the US;
🔹If the EU suddenly changes its position and proposes Russia to restore relations, Moscow needs to decide if this is beneficial to the country;
🔹The geographical area of the special operation has changed and expanded beyond Donbas due to Kiev receiving the US-made HIMARS and other weapons.
Full Transcript now available
Question: You just returned from a trip and are about to leave again soon. This “international isolation” is so tight that you are almost never home.
Here’s a question from our subscribers. At different levels, from the deputies to public officials, our talks with Ukraine are on and off. We say it’s impossible to hold talks now, but the next thing you know someone is saying it would be good to start them. Does it make sense or is it just a diplomatic ritual?
Sergey Lavrov: It doesn’t make any sense given the circumstances. Yesterday, the President touched on this while speaking at the news conference following talks with the leaders of Iran and Türkiye in Tehran.
Vladimir Putin once again made it clear that the Ukrainian leadership asked for talks early on during the special military operation. We didn’t say no. We approached this process honestly, but the first rounds of talks held in Belarus showed that the Ukrainian side didn’t really want to seriously discuss anything. Then, we passed our assessment of the situation over to them noting that if Kiev was serious about the talks, they should give us something “on paper” so we could understand what kind of agreements they had in mind. The Ukrainian side gave us a document that we found agreeable (yesterday the President again cited this fact) and were ready to conclude a treaty based on the principles outlined in it. Building on their logic, we drafted a corresponding document, which we made available to the Ukrainian side on April 15. Since then, we’ve heard nothing from them, but we hear other people such as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Olaf Scholz, Boris Johnson (though, not now for obvious reasons), President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell say that Ukraine must “win on the battlefield” and should not engage in talks, because it has a weak position on the front. First, they need to improve the situation and start dominating the Russian armed forces and the Donetsk and Lugansk militias, and only then start talks “from a position of strength.” I don’t think this approach holds water.
Question: It doesn’t hold water because Ukraine will fail to do so?
Sergey Lavrov: It won’t work. They will never be able to formulate “things” that really deserve people’s time. We understood this. It is no secret that Kiev is being held back from taking any constructive steps, and they are not just flooding it with weapons, but making it use those weapons in an increasingly risky manner. Foreign instructors and specialists are there servicing these systems (HIMARS and others).
With strong support from the Germans, Poles, and Balts, our US and British (Anglo-Saxon) “colleagues” want to make this an actual war and pit Russia against the European countries. Washington and London are sitting far away, across oceans and straits, but will benefit from this. The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent, if you look at the cumulative negative impact of the restrictions.
I do not doubt that the Ukrainians will not be allowed to hold talks until the Americans decide they have created enough destruction and chaos. Then, they will leave Ukraine alone and watch it get out of this mess.
Question: Do you think this plan is actionable? A big war, a clash between Russia and the European countries? In fact, it’s about a nuclear war.
Sergey Lavrov: The Americans are not thinking about this. Ambitious people who want to reach new heights in their careers have come to the White House. I’m not sure how they will try to fulfill these goals as part of this administration. They are acting irresponsibly and building plans and schemes that are fraught with major risk. We are talking about this publicly. We could have told them, but the Americans don’t want to talk to us, and we will not chase them.
The dialogue we had before was not meaningless if only because we could look into each other’s eyes and lay out our approaches. As soon as the special military operation started, the United States tore this dialogue down. I think that Washington hasn’t yet understood that it is playing a dangerous game, but many people in Europe are beginning to realise this.
Question: Is a Russia-US clash, a nuclear war possible in our view?
Sergey Lavrov: We have initiated several statements (Russian-American statement and statement by the leaders of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) to the effect that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it cannot ever be unleashed. This is our position and we will firmly stick to it.
Moreover, we have an endorsed doctrine that clearly explains in what cases Russia will be compelled to use nuclear arms. Our partners, colleagues, rivals or enemies (I don’t know how they refer themselves with regard to us) know this very well.
Question: We consider Vladimir Zelensky the legitimate representative of Ukraine. Why is that? We say with good reason that everything happening in that country is a result of the coup, a forced change of power. This did not happen under Zelensky, but he became president because of these events. Why did we acknowledge this initially?
Sergey Lavrov: Guided by his own ethical considerations, President of France Emmanuel Macron recently let everyone listen to a recording of his February telephone conversation with President of Russia Vladimir Putin in which the Russian leader expressed himself clearly. President Macron tried to persuade him not to bother too much with implementing the Minsk Agreements. He said that Donetsk and Lugansk were illegal entities and that it was necessary to work in the context of the suggested interpretations – allegedly Zelensky wanted this. Vladimir Putin replied that Vladimir Zelensky was the product of a state coup and that the established regime hadn’t gone anywhere.
Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.
Crimeans and the east of Ukraine refused to recognize the results of the coup. In Crimea, this led to the holding of a referendum on reuniting with Russia and in Donbass to a refusal to deal with the new, illegitimate central authorities that started a war. Then Pyotr Poroshenko began a presidential campaign. The election took place in late May, 2014. President of France François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders tried to persuade the President of Russia to say nothing in advance about his refusal to recognise the results of the Ukrainian elections. Vladimir Putin replied: since Poroshenko is holding the election with the slogans of peace, promises to restore the rights of all Ukrainians, including the residents of Donbass, we will not question the legitimacy of this process.
It turned out that Poroshenko quickly forgot his election promises. He cheated his voters, lied to them and his Western sponsors, and unleashed another round of war that was stopped with great difficulty in February 2015. Later the Minsk Agreements were signed. He recently admitted that he had no intention of fulfilling the agreements and signed them only because Ukraine had to build up its strength economically and militarily to “win back its land,” including Crimea. This is why he concluded these agreements.
Question: We did not realise this, did we?
Sergey Lavrov: Well, I still hoped that some conscience was left there. Poroshenko revealed his true attitude towards the Minsk Agreements: he would not fulfil a document endorsed by the UN Security Council. Thus, he confirmed once again, this time in public, that he was not a legitimate president, one that relies on the foundations of international law.
Vladimir Zelensky came to power with slogans of peace as well. He promised to return peace to Ukraine. He said all citizens of the country who wanted to speak Russian would be able to and nobody would harass them or discriminate against them. Listen to what he is saying now.
In the role of Servant of the People Zelensky played a democrat, a glad-hander, a teacher, one of the people, who defeated the oligarchs and paid off the IMF. The people became free. He dissolved the corrupt parliament and the government. There are video recordings that cannot be hidden. They show how Zelensky upheld the rights of the Russian language and Russian culture…
Question: He is an actor, Mr Lavrov!
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, an actor under the Stanislavsky system – quickly turns coat. He was recently asked about his attitude towards the people of Donbass. Mr Zelensky replied that there are people and there are species. He also said that if people feel Russian, let them go to Russia “for the sake of the future of their children and grandchildren.” This is exactly what Dmitry Yarosh said the first day after the coup in February 2014: “A Russian will never think like a Ukrainian, will not speak Ukrainian and will not glorify Ukrainian heroes. Russians need to leave Crimea.”
The elite that came to power after the coup have already established their national genetic code. Arseny Yatsenyuk “in between” Dmitry Yarosh, Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky called the residents of Donbass “subhuman.”
Question: Do you remember Petr Poroshenko saying that Ukrainian children would go to school, while Russian children would sit in basements? He said this to the people he considered to be their own.
Sergey Lavrov: Now they say that they will liberate their lands…
Question: Without any people?
Sergey Lavrov: I don’t know how Kiev is planning to treat these people. They would start an uprising.
Question: What people? They will try to wipe them out in HIMARS strikes. You mentioned conscience, but you can’t judge others by your own standards. If you have a conscience, this doesn’t mean that your “partners” have it as well.
Before you entered the room, we talked with Maria Zakharova about those whom you have described as seemingly serious people. Of course, we poked fun at them, which was bound to happen. Take the recent comment by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who has replaced our beloved Jen Psaki. When asked what President Joe Biden was doing the previous two days, she replied that he was thinking about the American people.
I mean that Western leaders are crumbling. Many of them have symptoms of “limited adequacy” and sometimes even “limited sanity.” They are going to be replaced. Are there grounds to believe that those who will replace them will display fewer symptoms of “limited adequacy”?
Sergey Lavrov: I would put it differently. The current political establishment that has been raised in the West can be said to have “adequate limitations.” They consider themselves to be adequate, but they have limited competence in terms of political experience and knowledge.
Question: Why is that?
Sergey Lavrov: I don’t know, but many people have taken note of this. Henry Kissinger mentioned this recently when speaking about Gerhardt Schroeder and Jacques Chirac. He didn’t put it bluntly, but he clearly hinted at the stark contrast.
There is a tendency towards the average in political processes. You should elect people who are easy to understand and who will focus on simple, banal subjects. They invented the green transition, shouting that everyone will have no air to breathe soon and will die, and that dolphins and fish will disappear, leaving human beings alone in a desert. They have to deal with the effects of the green transition now. President Vladimir Putin explained the details of this mechanism in Western politics and how it has led to a painful flop because of the lack of proper calculations.
I don’t know the reason for their inadequacy. Maybe the absence of strong leaders is convenient for someone?
Question: For whom exactly?
Sergey Lavrov: For the bureaucrats in the European Commission. There are 60,000 of them, which is a lot. They have become a thing-in-itself. It is no coincidence that Poland, Hungary and other countries have asked why they should listen to these people, in particular in the areas where they have no competence. This is really so.
Question: In other words, it is a kind of a “deep state” in Europe, isn’t it?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, it seems so. But it is not quite a “deep state” but the elite, the European Commission.
Question: Is it a “shallow state” then?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, and the pendulum is moving away from the side that was associated with rapid integration. The requirements that are being enforced by Brussels, which are not always based on formal arrangements, are becoming annoying and are preventing countries from living in accordance with their own traditions and religious beliefs. Today they are pestering Budapest with their propaganda of non-traditional values, but Hungarians don’t want this, just as we don’t want this and many other nations. The European Commission demands that Budapest must revise its position, or it will not receive the approved funding. I believe that this is bad for the EU.
Question: But good for us?
Sergey Lavrov: I don’t think so. I believe that we should stay aloof. We cannot be happy that people in Europe will suffer from the cold and lower living standards.
Question: I agree about suffering from the cold. But maybe the Europeans will finally have enough of being forced? Maybe pro-nation politicians will come to power, those who will care about their own people and therefore will not quarrel with Russia? No country can benefit from quarrelling with Russia.
Sergey Lavrov: This is true. It is a proper process of recovery. People are abandoning the illusion that Brussels should decide everything for them, that everything will be the same every day with cheap energy and food, that everything will be fine. This would be in the interests of Europe and European nations, but I don’t know how it will happen.
We will not be happy, but we won’t feel overly concerned either. I believe we should stay aloof. They have created these problems for themselves; they have opted for living in these conditions and for abandoning the natural and beneficial ties, which have been created over decades in energy, logistics and transport links. This is their choice. Love cannot be forced. This process, when they complete it, if at all, because it is incompatible with unilateral profiteering, will cost the subsequent economic development in Europe dearly. They should not ask us to revive agreements. They have been proved unreliable. We cannot rely on such “partners” when planning long-term strategic investment in the development of our country and its foreign ties. We will work with other partners who are predictable. They have always been there for us in the East, in the South and on other continents. Now that the share of the West in our foreign economic ties has been reduced dramatically, the share of our other partners will increase commensurately.
As for trends in Europe, there is also total lack of responsibility when it comes to explaining the reasons for the current crisis to their own people. Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz says he has no doubt that there are political rather than technical reasons for Russia’s intention to limit gas deliveries via Nord Stream. He has no doubt! As if the facts, which we have made public on numerous occasions and which President Putin has mentioned, do not prove that Europe has been systematically and consistently reducing the capabilities of Nord Stream 1 and has suspended Nord Stream 2, and how it retrospectively adopted restrictions on the operation of Nord Stream after all the investments had been made and the financing rules could not be changed. Nevertheless, the European Commission insisted on its decision, and it was adopted. Instead of using the pipeline to its full capacity, we have halved the transit of gas through it.
We are being accused of using hunger as a weapon. Ursula von der Leyen has said this.
Question: Cold and hunger. Do you remember General Frost? Now we have General Grain and General Heating.
Sergey Lavrov: US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen has made a pompous statement that the United States would not allow Russia, China or anyone else to break the international economic order, which has allegedly been approved by the international community. She said that economic integration has been weaponised by Russia. This is going much further than the other rubbish we have been hearing and looks like an agony. They don’t know how else to explain their own failure.
Question: You mentioned the green transition and how they are trying to force the LGBT agenda on some East European countries for which, like for us, it is completely alien. For you, an experienced person who has observed many processes for decades, it must be clearer than for us, the ordinary people. This agenda includes green transition, LGBT, MeToo, BLM, cancelling ballet at Britain’s biggest dance school, the ban on math exams in some schools because the minorities would not be able to learn it, the ban on using the words “breast milk” and “mother”. People are contemplating but cannot understand what the idea is and who benefits from it. Who do you think is behind it?
Sergey Lavrov: We cannot step in their shoes and see why they are doing what they are doing. It is incomprehensible. If a person has some inclinations, why shouldn’t they be left with that? Let them have these inclinations. Why is it necessary to make a movement banner out of it?
Question: Why did the new White House Press Secretary openly declare that she is gay and black?
Sergey Lavrov: I am also interested to see how and where the Western political thought has been evolving. Some progressive philosophers, from the point of view of imperialism and colonialism, believe that the gold billion, or those who lead it and make political decisions, want to reduce the population of the planet because the resources are limited. Too many people, too few resources. As Mikhail Zhvanetsky joked, there should be fewer of us. He said it in Soviet times, when there was not enough food and goods. And now I read this explanation in some Western publications. It is horrifying.
Question: Which is not very logical, because the golden billion is reducing its own ranks this way, while the population in Africa is increasing. In Nigeria, which now wants to be friends with us, there are seven children per woman.
Sergey Lavrov: No, all these ways are constantly promoted there.
Question: It will take some time for them to get there… Look at the Hollywood elite: every second child is transgender or something, or non-binary, and they will have no grandchildren. Yes, it seems that they have started with themselves.
Sergey Lavrov: Maybe it is part of the plan, to reproduce less. I said that I cannot explain this, and shared with you one of the conspiracy theories.
Question: Both before the special military operation and today, people have believed that the West cannot manage without Russia. This is true in many respects, as the fact that they have lifted some of the sanctions clearly shows. What is less clear is whether the new package of sanctions passed this week contains new restrictions or lifts the sanctions adopted earlier. But what if they can manage without Russia after all? What prospects do you see? Can the West do completely without Russian energy carriers in the future, if not during the upcoming winter but in 2023 or 2024? Will it refuse to launch Nord Stream 2 and stop using the resources of Nord Stream 1? Is it possible? What do you think about this?
Sergey Lavrov: The new package of restrictions includes both the sanctions and various exceptions from them because the West has already run out of spheres where it can inflict damage on Russia. Now they have to think about what they have done and how it affects them. As far as I know, the West has now introduced some clarifications, and this will help facilitate Russian food exports. For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.
Unfortunately, the West has been trying to involve UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in these games. He became concerned about the food crisis and visited Russia, and he advocated a package deal at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is necessary to lift the artificial and illegitimate restrictions on Russian grain, and action should be taken to clear mines at Ukrainian ports where Ukrainian grain is stored. Antonio Guterres said that he would persuade Europe and the United States to remove all obstacles hampering Russian grain deliveries, and that Russia would cooperate with them, Türkiye and Ukraine in clearing mines at Black Sea ports, to facilitate grain shipments. We replied that, in principle, it was possible to demine Black Sea ports without Russia, but that we would be ready to cooperate if they asked us. The UN Secretary-General actively promoted this package.
Last week, our colleagues visited Istanbul in order to coordinate this mechanism. We agreed on the basic principles for exporting Ukrainian grain. However, when members of the Russian delegation reminded those present about the second part of the package deal, the Ukrainian side flatly refused, and the UN delegation simply blushed and kept quiet.
Yesterday, we indicated to the UN Secretary-General that this was his initiative to begin with. In reply, Antonio Guterres proposed first resolving the issue of Ukrainian grain shipments, and said that Russian grain deliveries were next in line. This is foul play. People engaged in big politics should not behave in such a way. This means only one thing: I am convinced that the UN Secretary-General has come under tremendous pressure, first of all, from representatives of the United States and the United Kingdom who have settled in around him in the UN Secretariat in the posts of undersecretary-generals and who are actively using this “privatised” structure in their own interests. This is highly regrettable.
Question: How are they putting pressure on him, exactly? Technically, how do we explain this to people? Do as you’re told, or… what? Go to jail?
Sergey Lavrov: I don’t think they are using any personal methods of blackmail. Just, when the UN General Assembly is voting, they come up to the ambassadors, inform them that an anti-Russia resolution has been put to the vote while reminding them, for example, about their account in Chase Manhattan Bank or their daughter at Stanford. Things like that.
Question: But it’s kind of the same thing.
Sergey Lavrov: It happens. Well, of course, they don’t act with such arrogance here. Members of the UN Secretariat (the majority of them are from Western countries because the number of delegated secretariat seats depends on each state’s contribution) aren’t always neutral, as required by the UN Charter and the Regulations on the Secretariat. That’s life. I can assure you, it has always been like this.
Regarding the second part of your question, I think that Western politicians are now making every effort to avoid showing they have been mistaken. The ruling parties will try to do this by hook or by crook – they have no other way. But the opposition – in Austria, voices are increasingly heard (there’s the Austrian Freedom Party, which Brussels does not favour very much, but it’s a legitimate party). In other countries, the opposition is rising their heads: why are we doing this? Why can’t we just look at things and reach agreement? Many people have questions.
Developing countries don’t view the situation as Russia having crossed some “red line.” They remember what the Americans did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yugoslavia in 1999. With no notice, no warning that American interests were being infringed on, no calls to do something about it…
Question: No eight years of trying to reach agreement…
Sergey Lavrov: The United States bombed countries located 10,000 kilometres away from its coastline and razed cities to the ground. Europe never even dared to make a sound.
Question: No need to protect large communities of American compatriots living there…
Sergey Lavrov: That’s right. Our situation is totally different. There is a real threat, not something invented in order to spread our imperialist tentacles across the ocean – there’s a threat on our borders. For many years, we have been cautioning the West against turning Ukraine into an anti-Russia, with NATO infiltrating that country, against creating direct military threats to our security. Everyone is perfectly aware of this.
Returning to Europe, I don’t think that it is in European interests to completely cut off all ties with us and switch to LNG, which the Americans are trying to…
Question: …foist on them.
Sergey Lavrov: I wanted to use a less polite term, but foist will do. It will be their choice. Serious scientists write that Germany’s entire economic activity, its prosperity of the past decades was due primarily to Russian energy resources they bought at affordable, reasonable and predictable prices. True, LNG is a more flexible commodity. Gas has to be bought at the “end” of the pipeline, while LNG can be redirected. But this is also a disadvantage. When demand rose in Asia, the Americans sent their LNG there, because it was a better deal. This can lead not only to higher prices, but also to a shortage of supplies at a certain stage. But if they do this, we won’t have any particular problems.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin said that, given what they are doing with Nord Stream 2 (we’re ready to launch it, it is under operating pressure), in the current situation, 50 percent of the volume intended for that pipeline are already reserved for internal consumption: for heating purposes, for the chemical industry and for other industrial projects.
We will redirect supplies without any serious losses. I do not doubt it. We have buyers, we have demand; after all, there are applications within the country too – connecting households and facilities and developing the chemical industry.
Question: And thousands of villages without gas…
Sergey Lavrov: That’s why I mentioned connecting them.
So it will be their choice. I would like to say again: we should not (and, thank God, no one is trying to) invent any solutions implying the possibility, the probability, or even desirability of returning to the situation we had six months ago, where it was possible to restore the old supply chains. I think that they need to be discarded and new ones should be built that will be more reliable. This is what we are doing now, including the North-South corridor from St Petersburg to the Indian Ocean, and from India to Vladivostok. Several projects are already halfway through implementation. If and when, at some stage, Europe suddenly says that they have overreacted and are interested in restoring our economic relations and trade, we shouldn’t push them away. We will see how good the offer is, and only then react.
Question: We say if they duped you once, they’ll do it again. You mentioned the diversification of our areas of cooperation. We have covered the East (China, India) extensively. This time, you are going to Africa, which is south. What are you going to do there? What are your expectations? What should we expect?
Sergey Lavrov: We have long-standing good relations with Africa since the days of the Soviet Union which pioneered and led a movement that culminated in decolonisation. We provided assistance to the national liberation movement and then to the restoration of independent states and the rise of their economies. Hundreds of enterprises were built, which now form the basis of many African economies. At the UN, we led the movement to have decolonisation formalised as an integral part of international law and everyday life.
Then, there was the period when the Soviet Union disappeared and the Russian Federation emerged. We were confronted with major problems, not in Africa, but much closer, in our country.
We have been rebuilding our positions for many years now. The Africans are reciprocating. They are interested in having us. We never engaged in teaching them anything, but helped them overcome their problems so that they could live in their country the way they wanted to.
Question: They think we did teach them something, but in a good sense.
Sergei Lavrov: No. We helped them fulfil their goals. That’s how it was. We never told them not to be friends with America or anyone else. To this day, we are not lecturing them, unlike the Americans who go around Africa telling everyone “do not talk with the Chinese or the Russians. All they care about is their selfish interests, even when they trade with you.”
We visit each other every year. Once a year or every two years, the Foreign Minister visits African countries. We’re trying to cover as many countries as possible in a period of two to three years. This year, it will be Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Republic of the Congo. We have good traditions and economic foundations in these countries.
Egypt is our number one trade and economic partner in Africa with trade just under $5 billion. The first nuclear power plant is being built. The construction of a Russian industrial area on the banks of the Suez Canal is nearing completion. Our relations with Africa have even brighter prospects now that the African Union decided last year to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area. Specific criteria and tariffs for this area are being agreed upon, which will take some time. This will benefit Russia as Africa’s rising partner in terms of boosting our trade and investment which are quite modest compared to the United States, China and the EU. We must work hard, with our colleagues, to prepare for the second Russia-Africa summit. The first one took place in Sochi in 2019. The second one is planned to be held next year.
Question: Maybe in Odessa?
Sergey Lavrov: No, probably not in Odessa. We will announce the venue later. An economic forum will be held concurrently with the summit with round table discussions on trade, energy, cybersecurity, agriculture, outer space and nuclear energy.
It is important to step up our efforts. Africa has a population of 1.4 billion people, which is comparable to China and India. This is a great portion of the modern world and probably the most promising market. That is why companies and countries with good vision are building long-term strategies with regard to Africa, which is the continent of the future. We have an excellent political foundation underlying our relations and a good mutual understanding based on the fact that thousands of Africans who hold positions in their respective governments have studied in Russia and continue to do so. We need to use this human and political capital to achieve economic advancement.
Question: What kind of relations do we have with our “exes?” (I understand exes are rarely friends, but it still happens occasionally.) Do we have real friends among our exes, including Belarus? What is going on in Kazakhstan with mixed signals coming from there? Is there a sense that we ourselves are a little to blame for some things, that we let them go and gave them away to Europe, America, and even Türkiye? What do you think?
Sergey Lavrov: There was such a period. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. We signed the Belovezh Accords. Of course, the countries that were not invited to Belovezhskaya Pushcha were hurt. No doubt about it. I understand them. Then, some efforts were made to improve this situation (to make amends, so to speak). A special meeting was held in Alma-Ata in late 1991. But it still left a bad taste in the mouth. Most importantly, it was an event followed by some processes.
Our leadership did little to prevent the cooling of relations with our neighbours, closest allies, and comrades-in-arms during the first years of independence and sovereignty. We have lived together for many hundreds, even thousands of years. I remember that time. I was Deputy Foreign Minister in 1992-1994 before I left for work in New York. My scope of duties included international organisations, but at some point Andrey Kozyrev asked me to take up the CIS matters. I didn’t do it for long, though. The situation did not look too good (clearly, the Foreign Ministry was not the one to decide on building policies in this area, the Presidential Executive Office was). Back then, everyone thought they had no place to go. We lived together all that time and shared the language, the universities and the tastes. So, we thought we’ll just keep on living like that. Of course, over the long decades and centuries, the economy had become intertwined to the point where breaking ties was impossible.
True, the West wasn’t sitting on its hands. And not only the West. If you look at Central Asia now, you’ll see multiple “Central Asia plus partner” formats there, such as Central Asia plus the United States, or “plus the European Union,” or “plus Japan,” “plus China,” “plus Türkiye,” or “plus India.” “Plus Russia” is there as well. Despite the fact that we have the CIS, the EAEU, the SCO, the CSTO, there was no association where all five Central Asian countries and Russia were together. Now there is.
This is how things are, not only in foreign ministries, but in our economic agencies as well. It’s an important process. Water and energy were shared. Our Western “partners” are now trying to infiltrate these particular areas. The EU and the United States are coming up with their own programmes which will tailor the ongoing water and energy use processes that rely on the Soviet legacy to their needs, the needs of external players. Clearly, it makes sense to join efforts in this department which is what we are encouraging our partners to do. They agree, but the West is trying in every possible way to disrupt this natural process and meddle in our dealings with our “exes,” as you put it. Poet Andrey Voznesensky once famously said, “Don’t return to those you once loved.” This is the opening line. However, the poem ends with “Anyway, you have nowhere else to go.”
Question: A trendy modern poetess Vera Polozkova has the following line, “She is friends with all her exes as if they had never let her down.”
You, and the Foreign Ministry, said that you knew nothing about the special military operation before it began. At least, you knew nothing about it long before it started. Perhaps, this is not true, but that was the impression. May I ask you how you found out about it? What did you feel? I remember well what Tigran Keosayan and I felt at home at night, when we learned about it. I wonder what you felt back then. What do you think about the people who are now called “frightened patriots” who were frightened and left, those who are “ashamed” etc.?
Sergey Lavrov: The time and date of when I found out about it is not my secret.
Question: So, this is not a state secret?
Sergey Lavrov: This is not a state secret, but it is not my secret, either. If I may, I would like to leave it at that.
The sense of inevitability is what I felt when this announcement was made. Not joy. Imminent hostilities, with the citizens of your country going to defend justice and risk their lives, are not a reason for joy. It was a sense of inevitability and even relief. For many years we were unable to answer the question posed by the people of Donbass and many of our citizens as to how much longer we would allow them to mock common sense, the people, the UN Security Council resolution and every other aspect of it that was brazenly sabotaged.
Question: What do you think of those who are ashamed of being Russian?
Sergey Lavrov: We are now having a big discussion about foreign agents, and whether it was the right thing to do to draft a new law, which some people consider an extension to the old one and ask if it was right or wrong.
I watch talk shows, including those that you host, where issues are debated that everyone can relate to: so they left, what do we do about them now? How do we feel about them if they return? Or should they even be allowed to return? I don’t have an opinion. Each person is the master of their own destiny. That’s the way it is. But everyone must have a conscience. And everyone has to deal with their own conscience. This is how I see it. But there is something I cannot accept, and that’s people publishing things – I have a duty to read some resources designated as foreign agents in my line of work, and they describe with such lustful pleasure those insurmountable (from their point of view) problems that the Russian Federation is facing. They…
Question: Gloat.
Sergey Lavrov: Yes. They predict collapse. One of them wrote that Russia was threatened with death in terms of high technologies, because it has neither brains nor institutions. It is your country you are writing this about!
There are others. When Roscosmos, in response to the sanctions, told the Americans that, since they did not want our engines anymore, we would discontinue supplies to both the US and the UK, they imposed sanctions on our corporation, making any further contact impossible. A foreign agent site launched into a story about how our corporation had violated every conceivable obligation, and was now irreparably tainted as a dishonest partner that no one would ever deal with. We say double standards. That’s how they work, plain and simple.
My opinion is that these people should be left alone with themselves and realise what they have done. How to treat them is another matter. Will their former acquaintances stay in touch with them? How will the state go about renewing relations with them? That is another question. What is important is to leave them alone with their own conscience.
Question: Your trust that every person has a conscience has already done you a disservice with Petr Poroshenko and the Minsk agreements. Maybe you should just stop believing this. Not everyone has a conscience, unfortunately.
We all wonder, and every person in the country wants to know when “this” will end. We all want the special military operation to end as soon as possible, so that people stop dying – our soldiers, and the civilians that their former Ukraine is hitting every day. Ukraine still considers them its citizens de jure, but this isn’t stopping it, as we know. When will it end? We do not know. I won’t ask you about it. Obviously you don’t have an answer.
But where do you think it should end? I am not asking about the goals that Vladimir Putin announced at the start – the goals, and hence the potential results of this operation – the demilitarisation and denazification. This much is clear. Where should it end geographically? Where would it be reasonable, right and good for us?
Sergey Lavrov: As regards any projections or timeframe, I have just recalled an amusing fact. Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmitry Kuleba recently said that Vladimir Zelensky had set a deadline for joining the European Union, but he wouldn’t reveal that deadline, because many in the European Union might get scared and try to slow down their accession to the EU.
We don’t have any deadlines. As for the special military operation and geographic goals, President Vladimir Putin said clearly (as you quoted him): denazification and demilitarisation, which means no threats to our security, no military threats from the territory of Ukraine. This goal remains. Geography-wise, the situation was different when the negotiators met in Istanbul. Our readiness to accept the Ukrainian proposal was based on the situation as of the end of March 2022.
Question: That was the DPR and the LPR?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, more or less. Now the geography is different. It is more than the DPR, the LPR, but also the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and a number of other areas. This process continues, consistently and persistently. It will continue as long as the West, in its impotent rage, desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible, continues to flood Ukraine with more and more long-range weapons. Take the HIMARS. Defence Minister Alexey Reznikov boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.
Question: How can this be arranged, technically? This is our territory. Then there are the republics that will accede to us. In fact they already have – the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. You are diplomats, so you cannot say this. I’m a journalist, and I call a spade a spade. Further west, there is the territory controlled by Vladimir Zelensky. They have a common border. So either there should be a 300 kilometre buffer zone or something between them, or we need to march all the way to Lvov inclusive.
Sergey Lavrov: There is a solution to this problem. The military know this.
Question: A secret one? Do you think there is a chance that we will leave half-way? This is something our subscribers and viewers are fearing.
Sergey Lavrov: I see no reason to question what President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, and reaffirmed a few days ago – our goals remain the same. And they will be met.
Following intense Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk on June 13, some Western media sources, in tandem with outlets in Kiev, unsurprisingly claimed that the attack – which killed at least five civilians and struck a busy maternity hospital – was perpetrated by Russian forces.
Why Moscow would launch rockets at its own allies wasn’t explained, nor would it make much sense.
The Donetsk People’s Republic’s foreign ministry reported: “Such an unprecedented. in terms of power, density and duration of fire, raid on the DPR capital was not recorded during the entire period of the armed conflict [since 2014]. In two hours, almost 300 MLRS rockets and artillery shells were fired.”
The Ukrainian shelling began late morning, resumed in the afternoon, and continued for another two hours in the evening, a deafening series of blasts throughout the city, terrorizing residents and targeting apartment buildings, civilian infrastructure, the aforementioned hospital, and industrial buildings.
In the hard-hit Kievskiy district, to the north, the shelling caused fires at a water bottling plant and a warehouse for stationery, destroying it. The building was still in flames when journalist Roman Kosarev and I arrived about an hour after the attack. Apartment buildings in the area also came under firer, leaving doors and windows blown out and cars destroyed.
Fires still burning at a stationary warehouse & a nearby water bottling facility in Donetsk after Ukrainian bombings. Ukraine pounded all over Donetsk today, including a market, killing three civilians, one of which a child. pic.twitter.com/VW8FU529Ek
The destroyed gas station was on a street where I stayed in April, which is completely residential.
DPR head Denis Pushilin said, “The enemy literally crossed all the lines. Prohibited methods of warfare are being used, residential and central districts of Donetsk are being shelled, other cities and settlements of the DPR are also under fire now.”
To all those in the West who support Kiev regime we recommend to examine the evidence of barbaric heavy artillery shelling of Donetsk by Ukrainian 🇺🇦 forces on June 13th. ☝5 hospitals, 3 schools and a kindergarten have been damaged. Will @UNESCO react to these crimes of Kiev❓ pic.twitter.com/Nus5lDuTy5
— RussianMissionUNESCO (@unesco_russia) June 14, 2022
Hypocritical silence after maternity hospital shelling
In a world where media reported honestly instead of manufacturing its own reality, there would be outrage over Ukraine’s attack on the Donetsk maternity hospital. But history shows that is not a world we live in.
As I wrote last year, Western media and talking heads also diligently avoided condemnation when terrorists attacked or destroyed Syrian hospitals, including the shelling of a maternity hospital in Aleppo, which killed three women.
At the damaged Donetsk hospital, I saw the gaping hole in the roof and remnants of the Uragan MLRS rocket which struck it. Most of the windows of both buildings were blown out.
Images shared on Twitter noted, “Both gynecology and intensive care have been bombed.” Other footage, taken by Donetsk war correspondent Dmitri Ashtrakhan, showed dozens of women, some heavily pregnant, taking shelter in the basement of the shelled maternity hospital.
War reporter Dmitry Astrakhan at the Vishnevsky Hospital in Donetsk, where a Ukrainian shell directly hit the maternity ward. All the women, children & hospital staff are safe, they managed to evacuate to the basement in time. pic.twitter.com/HR7yCam8IN
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) June 13, 2022
Were these women and this hospital in Kiev, you can bet Western media would be loudly reporting it 24/7 for weeks. Instead, just as the West has steadfastly ignored Ukraine’s eight years of war on Donbass, they also omit reporting on the hospital.
Grotesquely, some Ukrainian and Western media instead disingenuously reported that it was a Russian attack, not Ukrainian, which terrorized, injured and killed civilians on June 13.
The German @tagesschau claimed yesterday that Russia has shelled the market in Donetsk!
Such a blatant lie, fooling the people for the sake of shaping the needed narrative and public opinion to serve the interests of certain players. pic.twitter.com/siBvkI07eB
— Maria Dubovikova ✦ ماريا دوبوفيكوفا (@politblogme) June 14, 2022
Just as Western media’s lack of reporting, or twisting of the narrative, on Ukraine’s shelling was to be expected, so too was the UN’s weak-worded condemnation, with the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calling it“extremely troubling.” You can bet that were the situation reversed and Russia responsible for bombing a Ukrainian maternity hospital, his words would have been far stronger.
In fact, they already have been: Three months ago, when Kiev accused Russia of an attack on a maternity hospital, in Mariupol.
Back then, the Guterres emphatically tweeted, “Today’s attack on a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, where maternity & children’s wards are located, is horrific. Civilians are paying the highest price for a war that has nothing to do with them. This senseless violence must stop. End the bloodshed now.”
A strong reaction to what later emerged to be a hoax claim, when the UN itself even admitted it could not verify the story. But a mild reaction to a documented reality in Donetsk.
The UN did, at least, rightly note the attack on the Donetsk maternity hospital was, “an obvious breach of the international humanitarian law.” So there’s that.
The thing is, Ukraine has violated international law for its eight years of waging war on the Donbass republics, using prohibited heavy weapons and targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is only the latest incident.
Tears flow for hoax hospital bombing
In March, Western corporate-owned media supported Kiev’s claim that Russia had launched air strikes on a Mariupol maternity hospital, claiming three civilians had been killed. At the time, as reported, “The White House condemned the ‘barbaric’ use of force against innocent civilians, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that ‘there are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless’.”
As it turned out, witnesses reported there hadn’t been any air strike. There were explosions: just as terrorists bombed an Aleppo home in 2016 and used a mildly injured boy for their propaganda against Syria and Russia, so too did Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, setting the stage to incriminate Moscow.
Russia called the accusations “a completely staged provocation,” analyzing photos from the area and noting “evidence of two separate staged explosions near the hospital: An underground explosion and another of minor power, aimed at the hospital building,” and further noting that a “high-explosive aviation bomb would destroy the outer walls of the building.”
Russia also pointed out that the facility had stopped working when Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion expelled staff in late February and militarized the hospital, as Ukrainian forces did elsewhere in Donbass.
Marianna Vyshemirskaya, one of the women featured in the Western propaganda around the hospital, later spoke out and said there was no air strike, and that prior to the alleged event, Ukrainian soldiers expelled all the doctors and moved pregnant women to another building.
She also maintained that she and other women were filmed without warning by an Associated Press journalist dressed in a military uniform and wearing a helmet.
Even now, two days after Ukraine’s intense bombardment of Donetsk and targeting of the maternity hospital, when still more testimonies have emerged, Western media and politicians remain silent.
The suffering, and deaths, of the people of Donetsk doesn’t fit the Western narrative, so they misreport it or simply just don’t reference it at all, enabling Ukraine to continue to commit war crimes.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
A top Saudi court upheld death sentences of two young Bahraini nationals over trumped-up terror charges.
The Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia issues a final ruling to execute Bahraini prisoners of conscience, Sadiq Thamer and Jaafar Sultan
The Riyadh-based supreme court of appeals sentenced Sadiq Majid Thamer and Jaafar Mohammed Sultan to death after alleging that they have been found guilty of “smuggling explosives” into the kingdom and “involved in terrorist activities.”
Human rights organizations and an opposition protest movement described the rulings as “unfair and arbitrary,” saying they were issued based on confessions extracted under torture.
This come as social media activists have launched campaigns in solidarity with the two Bahraini youths, with human rights organizations and campaigners calling for an end to the “unjust” ruling and their immediate release.
Bahrain’s February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition held the Saudi regime fully responsible for the youths’ safety, calling on the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to take on his duties and intervene urgently to stop the crime.
The Bahraini opposition movement also called on the international community to stand up against Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and prevent the death sentences from being carried out.
The Coalition demanded swift action to save the lives of the two young Bahraini nationals before it gets too late, considering Bahrain’s ruling Khalifah regime as a partner in any criminal action against the Arab nation.
Sultan and Thamer were arrested in May 2015 along the King Fahd Causeway, which connects Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
They were held incommunicado for months after their arrest. The Bahraini youths were subjected to systematic and fatal torture with the aim of extracting false confessions from them.
Ever since bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in 2017, the kingdom has arrested dozens of activists, bloggers, intellectuals and others perceived as political opponents, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations of the crackdown.
Muslim scholars have been executed and women’s rights campaigners have been put behind bars and tortured as freedom of expression, association, and belief continue to be denied.
Over the past years, Riyadh has also redefined its anti-terrorism laws to target activism.
Bahrain’s most prominent cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim has said that drawing up a new constitution is the only way out of the political crisis in the protest-hit tiny Gulf kingdom, urging the regime in Manama to pursue an agreement with the Bahraini opposition instead of increasingly suppressing dissent.
Demonstrations have been held in Bahrain on a regular basis ever since a popular uprising began in mid-February 2011.
The participants demand that the Al Khalifah regime relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established.
Manama, however, has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent.
Palestinians refused calls for a joint investigation of Shireen Abu Aqla’s murder, citing Tel Aviv’s track record of inaccurate investigations of their soldiers’ crimes
Thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank joined the funeral procession of murdered Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla Nasri on 12 May, one day after she was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers.
Her funeral procession started from the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah, before arriving at the presidential compound of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where President Mahmoud Abbas bid her farewell.
#BREAKING: The funeral procession of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed covering an Israeli raid in occupied West Bank, has begun in #Palestine. pic.twitter.com/4Xwo8PmhRD
During the ceremony, Abbas said Israel was “fully responsible” for Abu Aqla’s death.
Her body will make its way to Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, where her family lives, before being laid to rest on 13 May.
The colleagues of Abu Aqla, who also came under fire on 11 May while covering Israeli raids on Jenin, said the occupation troops deliberately targeted the senior Al Jazeera correspondent, despite wearing a bulletproof vest clearly labeled PRESS.
Journalist witnesses claim Shireen Abu Aqla, senior Al Jazeera reporter, was deliberately targeted by Israeli occupation forces this morning. VIDEO: pic.twitter.com/qucl2Vandh
“The [bullet] that killed Shireen was intended to kill her because the sniper fired the bullet at an area of her body that was not protected,” fellow journalist Shatha Hanaysha said.
Hanaysha also highlighted that the Israeli snipers who opened fire could clearly see that they were journalists.
In response to the accusations, Israeli officials initially tried to dodge the blame for the murder, blaming Palestinian factions instead.
“There is a good chance that armed Palestinians, who fired widely, are the ones who led to the unfortunate death of the journalist,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told reporters hours after the murder.
However, later in the day, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi said it was “unclear” who fired the shot that killed the journalist.
“At this stage, we cannot determine by whose fire she was harmed and we regret her death,” the Israeli officer told Hebrew media.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz also struck a more cautious note, saying: “We are trying to figure out exactly what happened … I don’t have final conclusions.”
For their part, the PA has rejected a US-backed call for a joint investigation into the murder with Tel Aviv.
“Israel has requested a joint investigation and to be handed over the bullet that assassinated the journalist Shireen. We refused that, and we affirmed that our investigation would be completed independently,” Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh said on 12 May.
The official also added that all evidence and witness statements confirm that the Palestinian-American journalist was assassinated by Israeli special units.
As international condemnation grows, the EU and UN have joined calls by right groups for an independent investigation into the murder of Abu Aqla.
The office of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a statement saying he was “appalled by the killing of Shireen Abu Aqla, a Palestinian-American reporter for Al Jazeera TV.”
The lead spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU, Peter Stano, said that it is vital for a “thorough, independent investigation to clarify all the circumstances of this incident as soon as possible and for those responsible to be brought to justice.”
Rights groups, lawyers and Palestinian authorities, however, say they do not expect a credible investigation into the killing by Israel, which has a track record of not thoroughly investigating crimes committed by the Israeli army.
Last month, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) submitted a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing Israel of systematically targeting journalists working in Palestine.
The IFJ has repeatedly condemned Israel’s deliberate targeting of journalists and media facilities in occupied Palestine.
According to WAFA, least 55 Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000, with no one ever being held responsible.
The only antidote to propaganda dementia is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed.
By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted
Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.
What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.
This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.
As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.
Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.
Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged
Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism.
Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.
With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable:
“I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”
Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.
Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa.
The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”
Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged.
The key take away may be here: “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”
Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.” The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”
Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”
And that mirrors the psyche of American elites: “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”
Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans “no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. They say that now there are few rules. For us, they don’t exist at all. There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.
Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis: “In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.”
The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.
The pace of the game in the new chessboard
In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”
That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.
Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.
So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.
That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.
Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine.
So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card.
As one of the founders of the United Nations and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has always supported this universal organisation. We believe the UN is not simply universal but it is unique in a way – the international community does not have another organisation like it. We are doing all we can to support the principles on which it rests, and we intend to continue doing this in the future.
We find the expression of some of our colleagues about a world based on rules somewhat strange. We believe the main rule is the UN Charter and other documents adopted by this organisation rather than some papers written by their authors as they see fit or aimed at ensuring their own interests.
We are also surprised to hear statements by our colleagues that imply that some in the world have exceptional status or can claim exclusive rights because the Charter of the United Nations reads that all participants in international communication are equal regardless of their strength, size or geographical location. I think this is similar to what the Bible reads about all people being equal. I am sure we will find the same idea in both the Quran and the Torah. All people are equal before God. So, the idea that someone can claim a kind of exceptional status is very strange to us.
We are living in a complicated world, and, therefore, we proceed from reality and are willing to work with everyone.
No doubt, at one time the United Nations was established to resolve acute crises and went through different periods in its development. Quite recently, just several years ago, we heard it had become obsolete, and there was no need for it anymore. This happened whenever it prevented someone from reaching their goals in the international arena.
We have always said that there is no other universal organisation like the United Nations, and it is necessary to cherish the institutions that were created after WWII for the express purpose of settling disputes.
I know about your concern over Russia’s military operation in Donbass, in Ukraine. I think this will be the focus of our conversation today. I would just like to note in this context that the entire problem emerged after a coup d’état staged in Ukraine in 2014. This is an obvious fact. You can call it whatever name you like and have whatever bias in favour of those who did it, but this was really an anti-constitutional coup.
This was followed by the situation with the expression of their will by the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol. They acted in practically the same way as the people living in Kosovo – they made a decision on independence and then turned to us with a request to join the Russian Federation. The only difference between the two cases was that in Kosovo this decision on sovereignty was adopted by Parliament whereas Crimea and Sevastopol made it at a nationwide referendum.
A similar problem emerged in south-eastern Ukraine, where the residents of several territories, at least, two Ukrainian regions, did not accept the coup d’état and its results. But they were subjected to very strong pressure, in part, with the use of combat aviation and heavy military equipment. This is how the crisis in Donbass, in south-eastern Ukraine, emerged.
As you know, after another failed attempt by the Kiev authorities to resolve this problem by force, we arrived at the signing of agreements in the city of Minsk. This is what they were called – the Minsk Agreements. It was an attempt to settle the situation in Donbass peacefully.
To our regret, during the past eight years the people that lived there found themselves under a siege. The Kiev authorities announced in public that they were organising a siege of these territories. They were not embarrassed to call it a siege although initially they had renounced this idea and continued military pressure.
Under the circumstances, after the authorities in Kiev actually went on record as saying – I would like to emphasise that the top state officials announced this in public – that they did not intend to fulfil the Minsk Agreements, we were compelled to recognise these regions as independent and sovereign states to prevent the genocide of the people living there. I would like to reiterate: this was a forced measure to stop the suffering of the people living in those territories.
Unfortunately, our colleagues in the West preferred to ignore all this. After we recognised the independence of these states, they asked us to render them military aid because they were subjected to military actions, an armed aggression. In accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Chapter VII, we were forced to do this by launching a special military operation.
I would like to inform you that although the military operation is underway, we are still hoping to reach an agreement on the diplomatic track. We are conducting talks. We have not abandoned them.
Moreover, at the talks in Istanbul, and I know that you have just been there since I spoke with President Erdogan today, we managed to make an impressive breakthrough. Our Ukrainian colleagues did not link the requirements for Ukraine’s international security with such a notion as Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders, leaving aside Crimea, Sevastopol and the newly Russia-recognised Donbass republics, albeit with certain reservations.
But, unfortunately, after reaching these agreements and after we had, in my opinion, clearly demonstrated our intentions to create the conditions for continuing the talks, we faced a provocation in the town of Bucha, which the Russian Army had nothing to do with. We know who was responsible, who prepared this provocation, using what means, and we know who the people involved were.
After this, the position of our negotiators from Ukraine on a further settlement underwent a drastic change. They simply renounced their previous intentions to leave aside issues of security guarantees for the territories of Crimea, Sevastopol and the Donbass republics. They simply renounced this. In the relevant draft agreement presented to us, they simply stated in two articles that these issues must be resolved at a meeting of the heads of state.
It is clear to us that if we take these issues to the heads of state level without even resolving them in a preliminary draft agreement, they will never be resolved. In this case, we simply cannot sign a document on security guarantees without settling the territorial issues of Crimea, Sevastopol and the Donbass republics.
Nevertheless, the talks are going on. They are now being conducted online. I am still hoping that this will lead us to some positive result.
This is all I wanted to say in the beginning. I am sure we will have many questions linked with this situation. Maybe there will be other questions as well. We will talk.
I am very happy to see you. Welcome to Moscow.
(In his remarks, the UN Secretary General expressed concern over the situation in Ukraine, while emphasising the need for a multilateral world order based on the UN Charter and international law. Antonio Guterres also presented the two proposals he had put forward the same day during his meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. These proposals concern humanitarian matters, including humanitarian corridors, in particular, for Mariupol residents, as well as setting up a humanitarian contact group in which the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Russia, and Ukraine would work together to discuss the situation in order to make these corridors truly safe and effective.)
Vladimir Putin: Mr Secretary General,
Regarding the invasion, I am well-versed in the documents of the International Court on the situation in Kosovo. In fact, I have read them myself. I remember very well the decision by the International Court, which states that when fulfilling its right to self-determination a territory within any state does not have to seek permission from the country’s central government in order to proclaim its sovereignty. This was the ruling on Kosovo, and this is what the International Court decided, and everyone supported it. I personally read all the comments issued by the judicial, administrative and political bodies in the United States and Europe – everyone supported this decision.
If so, the Donbass republics, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, can enjoy the same right without seeking permission from Ukraine’s central government and declare their sovereignty, since the precedent has been created.
Is this so? Do you agree with this?
(Antonio Guterres noted that the United Nations did not recognise Kosovo).
Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course, but the court did. Let me finish what I was saying.
If there is a precedent, the Donbass republics can do the same. This is what they did, while we, in turn, had the right to recognise them as independent states.
Many countries around the world did this, including our Western opponents, with Kosovo. Many states recognised Kosovo. It is a fact that many Western countries recognised Kosovo as an independent state. We did the same with the Donbass republics. After that, they asked us to provide them with military assistance to deal with the state that launched military operations against them. We had the right to do so in full compliance with Chapter VII, Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Just a second, we will talk about this in a minute. But first I would like to address the second part of your question, Mariupol. The situation is difficult and possibly even tragic there. But in fact, it is very simple.
I had a conversation with President Erdogan today. He spoke about the ongoing fighting there. No, there is no fighting there; it is over. There is no fighting in Mariupol; it has stopped.
Part of the Ukrainian armed forces that were deployed in other industrial districts have surrendered. Nearly 1,300 of them have surrendered, but the actual figure is larger. Some of them were injured or wounded; they are being kept in absolutely normal conditions. The wounded have received medical assistance from our doctors, skilled and comprehensive assistance.
The Azovstal plant has been fully isolated. I have issued instructions, an order to stop the assault. There is no direct fighting there now. Yes, the Ukrainian authorities say that there are civilians at the plant. In this case, the Ukrainian military must release them, or otherwise they will be doing what terrorists in many countries have done, what ISIS did in Syria when they used civilians as human shields. The simplest thing they can do is release these people; it is as simple as that.
You say that Russia’s humanitarian corridors are ineffective. Mr Secretary-General, you have been misled: these corridors are effective. Over 100,000 people, 130,000–140,000, if I remember correctly, have left Mariupol with our assistance, and they are free to go where they want, to Russia or Ukraine. They can go anywhere they want; we are not detaining them, but we are providing assistance and support to them.
The civilians in Azovstal, if there are any, can do this as well. They can come out, just like that. This is an example of a civilised attitude to people, an obvious example. And anyone can see this; you only need to talk with the people who have left the city. The simplest thing for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.
We maintain contact with them, with those who are hiding underground at the Azovstal plant. They have an example they can follow: their comrades-in-arms have surrendered, over a thousand of them, 1,300. Nothing bad has happened to them. Moreover, Mr Secretary-General, if you wish, if representatives of the Red Cross and the UN want to inspect their detainment conditions and see for themselves where and how medical assistance is being provided to them, we are ready to organise this. It is the simplest solution to a seemingly complex issue.
In the course of posing itself as the victim instead of the aggressor and the occupier, a Zionist regime’s mouthpiece claimed that Hezbollah’s efforts to obtain drones and precision-guided missiles heighten the threat along the ‘Israeli’ occupation regime’s already sensitive northern border with Lebanon.
‘Israeli’ regime’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan claimed in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that there are “troubling developments which threaten the ‘peace’ and ‘security’ of ‘Israel’ and Lebanon, as well as the region as a whole.”
The letter, presented in advance of a Security Council discussion scheduled for Thursday on the secretary-general’s periodic report on adherence to Resolution 1701, which set the ceasefire terms that ended the ‘Israeli’ war on Lebanon in July 2006, added that the developments include “efforts by Hezbollah to obtain advanced weapon systems, including UAVs and Precision-Guided Missiles, underline a troubling reality on the ground.”
Erdan referenced Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s February 16 speech in which he spoke of the Resistance movement’s “advanced capabilities in self-production of drones, and its acquired ability to convert rockets into Precision-Guided Missiles [PGM].”
“Nasrallah once again referred to the expertise in transforming Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets into PGM’s,” Erdan said.
‘Israel’s’ ALMA Research Center claims that Hezbollah has a minimum of “2,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, many of them advanced UAVs from Iran and others manufactured independently.”
In the same regard, the ‘Israeli’ occupation regime’s military Air Force, considered the strongest air force in the Middle East, has admitted that identifying and intercepting drones – whether belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, or Iranian ones – is challenging, and considers drones to be one of the top five threats facing Tel Aviv.
Last month, Hezbollah flew a small, remotely piloted aircraft into the ‘Israeli’-occupied Palestinian airspace. Hezbollah announced that the drone was able to fly inside the occupied territories for 40 minutes and returned unharmed. The Zionist regime’s Air Force dispatched several fighter jets but failed to take it down.
Although the Zionist military has various ways to intercept drones – like electronic warfare, the ‘Iron Dome’ and fighter jets like the F-35 – Hezbollah’s drone platforms pose a serious challenge to identify and shoot down since they are small, fast and fly low to the ground, making it hard for ‘Israeli’ radar to detect them.
In addition to its drones, Hezbollah has an arsenal of an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles.
Taking into account the rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the settlements of Ukraine, where nationalists continue to forcibly detain thousands of civilians, including foreigners, yesterday the Russian side, despite repeated failures of all agreements by Kiev authorities, came up with another initiative to conduct a humanitarian operation. At the same time, we have completed all preparation for the evacuation of civilians and foreign citizens through safe corridors.
Unfortunately, out of the ten routes suggested to the Ukrainian side – two from Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Mariupol – including one from each city to the Russian Federation, as well as one through the territories controlled by the Kiev authorities to Poland, Moldova, Romania, official Kiev confirmed only one route – from Sumy through Poltava further to the border with Poland.
At present, thanks to the unprecedented security measures taken by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 723 people have been evacuated along this route (among them: 576 are citizens of India, 115 of China, 20 of Jordan, 12 of Tunisia).
In addition, Russia, without the participation of the Ukrainian side, evacuated 5,334 people from dangerous zones in various regions of Ukraine, as well as the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, including 781 children. Since the beginning of the special military operation more than 174,000 people have been evacuated including 44,250 children. The state border of the Russian Federation was crossed by 20,033 personal vehicles including 777 per day.
At present, also without the participation of the Ukrainian side, a humanitarian operation is being completed to evacuate 223 foreign citizens from dangerous areas of Kherson region, through Crimea to Novorossiysk, including 188 people from Turkey, 15 from Egypt, 8 from Italy, 6 from Pakistan and 5 from India, as well as 1 from Brazil. But these figures will increase as the operation is still ongoing.
At the same time, the official Kiev authorities continue to reject all the main evacuation routes from Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Mariupol to the territory of the Russian Federation. I would like to remind the Ukrainian side that in our database, 2,541,367 appeals have already been recorded through various communication channels from citizens of Ukraine, as well as foreigners, with requests to rescue and evacuate them from 1,917 settlements of Ukraine.
This database contains the names, surnames and addresses of these people, heartbreaking stories about the difficult humanitarian situation, about the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by nationalists, murders, physical violence and illegal arrests.
If we had basic confidence in the Ukrainian authorities, then we could give them this database in order to dispel the speculation that no one wants to go to the Russian Federation. But for obvious reasons, we cannot do this. As soon as the database is in the hands of the nationalists, all Ukrainian citizens who have applied for help will face persecution, humiliation, torture and execution.
For the same reason, we are afraid to give this information on to representatives of the United Nations, since detailed information about the citizens of Ukraine may also fall into the hands of nationalists.
Official representatives of the Kiev authorities and mayors of cities received the strictest instructions to prevent any attempt to evacuate to the Russian Federation. Citizens simply do not receive information about a possible evacuation to Russia and the creation of humanitarian corridors.
Any attempts to exit through humanitarian corridors to the Russian Federation are suppressed by the nationalists. We have already told you about this. Any additional comments here are unnecessary.
But no matter how the situation develops, no matter what measures are taken by the Kiev regime, including with the assistance of short-sighted, unscrupulous UN employees, as well as other international organizations to conceal their monstrous crimes, sooner or later, the civilized world will learn about all the atrocities against its people.
This database will become direct evidence of lawlessness and crimes of the Kiev authorities against the citizens of Ukraine.
The Kiev regime, as a result of the loss of civil law administration in cities and towns, with its helpless actions, in practice, supports the chaos reigning in the territories controlled by Bandera gangs, does not notice the numerous facts of looting, which have already assumed catastrophic proportions.
This says that official Kiev does not control the state of affairs in its own country and cannot ensure the fulfillment of its obligations. All fundamental decisions are essentially taken by the nationalists and their accomplices.
Radical gangs continue to intimidate civilians, threatening them with murder when they try to evacuate towards Russia.
At the same time, the checkpoints in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania unprepared to receive Ukrainian refugees trying to find protection from the terror organized by the territorial defence battalions. Traffic jams at border crossings. People are forced to abandon vehicles and walk with heavy bags. The queues stretched up to 40 kilometers, and the passage time exceeded two days.
At the same time, there are no toilets, no water, no food at the checkpoints, there are no heating points and medical care. People are forced to stay outside for days at sub-zero temperatures. Numerous cases of physical violence, robberies, looting against Ukrainian refugees and foreign citizens were recorded by local criminals, who, in addition, demand a bribe of up to one and a half thousand US dollars for organizing unimpeded passage.
Various restrictions on admission have been introduced. In particular, male persons aged 18 to 60 years are not allowed to enter the territory of Poland without permission from Ukrainian military enlistment offices. But corrupt border guards offer a bribe of up to $5,000 to cross the border without hindrance.
After crossing the border, refugees face numerous problems related to the lack of basic conditions for accommodation and recreation. In neighboring states, tent camps without any amenities are provided for their accommodation.
Despite the inconsistency of the actions of the Kiev authorities, we are ready to patiently wait for constructive work on humanitarian issues from them and hope for close cooperation with the relevant structures of the UN, the OSCE and other international organizations. Now, more than ever, it is important to get away from the political engagement of the humanitarian component, as a high-level official did immorally from the rostrum of the United Nations. This is extremely important for every person who finds himself in the most difficult humanitarian conditions in the settlements of Ukraine.
Since yesterday, the Joint Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has organized effective interaction with UN representatives, who, after the appeal of UN Secretary General António Guterres to the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, officially arrived in Moscow and are in contact with us around the clock.
Militants of the territorial defence battalions continue to hold hostage as a human shield more than four and a half million civilians, as well as about two thousand foreigners who have already expressed a desire to evacuate to safe places. Information about cases of discrimination against human rights on racial grounds by neo-Nazis continues to come in.
At the same time, the Russian side is creating the necessary conditions for a peaceful and safe life in all the liberated territories, ensuring unimpeded access of the population to any humanitarian aid.
More than 9,000 temporary accommodation centers continue to function normally in almost all regions of the Russian Federation. Strictly individual work is organized with each person arriving in Russia.
The accumulation of humanitarian aid at points continues, more than 15,500 tons have already been accumulated.
946 tons of humanitarian cargo have already been delivered to Ukraine, 132 humanitarian actions have been carried out in the settlements of Zaporozhye, Kiev, Kharkov, Kherson and Chernigov regions, as well as in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. Over the past day 22 humanitarian actions were carried out in Kiev and Chernigov regions, as well as in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, during which 325 tons of basic necessities were handed over to the civilian population of the liberated regions, medicines and food.
To date, 33 humanitarian actions have been planned and are currently being carried out in Kharkov and Kherson regions, in Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, during which 341 tons of basic necessities, medicine and food will be distributed.
عندما تحققت أميركا في العام 2006 من أن «إسرائيل» لن تحقق أهداف عدوانها على لبنان، وتأكدت أن المقاومة صمدت واستعصت على جيش العدوان «الإسرائيلي» الذي شنّ ما أسماه «حرب لبنان الثانية» التي هدف منها إلى تفكيك المقاومة وتجريدها من سلاحها وفرض علاقة مع لبنان، وفقاً لأحكام تشبه اتفاقية 17 أيار للعام 1983، أقول عندما تأكدت أميركا من استحالة تحقق شيء في الميدان مما أرادته «إسرائيل»، سارعت مع فرنسا لوضع مشروع قرار قدّمته إلى مجلس الأمن، توخت بموجبه إعطاء «إسرائيل» في السياسة ما عجزت عن أخذه بالسلاح في الميدان. ولذلك تضمّنت مسودة مشروع القرار بنداً (البند 10) تنشأ بموجبه قوات متعددة الجنسيات للعمل في الجنوب تحت الفصل السابع، بما يشكل سياجاً يحمي «إسرائيل» ويعطل أو يمنع أيّ عمل مقاوم ضدّ احتلالها.
كانت أميركا متيقنة يومها من أن الضغوط المتعددة الأشكال، سياسياً واقتصادياً واجتماعياً، التي تمارس على المقاومة وجمهورها في الداخل ومن الخارج سترغم قيادتها على القبول بوقف الحرب، وفقاً للشروط الأميركية «الإسرائيلية»، التي تعطي المهزوم ما يشاء وتحرم المنتصر ما حقق من مكاسب، وكانت مرتاحة جداً لأداء الحكومة اللبنانية يومها التي اجترح رئيسها السنيورة بدعة ما أسمي «النقاط السبع»، التي تضمّنت في نقطتها الرابعة نزع سلاح المقاومة، ولذلك لم تتردّد أميركا ومعها فرنسا من تقديم مشروع القرار الذي يتضمّن كلّ ذلك إلى مجلس الأمن، الذي رأى أن يستحصل على موافقة الحكومة اللبنانية «وهي مضمونة كما قيل لهم» قبل إقرار القرار.
وهنا كانت الصدمة لأميركا ومن معها من أوروبيين وعرب، ولحكومة السنيورة برئيسها وأغلبية وزرائها، صدمة أحدثها رفض رئيس الجمهورية العماد إميل لحود لهذا التنازل الفظيع، رفض عّبر عنه بقوله في مجلس الوزراء «لا يُعقل أن نعطي «إسرائيل» في السياسة ما عجزت عن أخذه في الميدان»، ومنع الرئيس لحود مجلس الوزراء من الموافقة على العرض، وتمسكت المقاومة بمكتسباتها رافضة أيّ قرار يمسّ سلاحها، ما أدى إلى تعديل مشروع القرار والتحوّل إلى صيغة أقلّ عدائية ضد المقاومة، فكان القرار 1701، الذي صدر تحت الفصل السادس واحتفظ بقوات اليونيفيل بعد أن زاد من عديدها وأدخل عليها قوات بحرية وحدّد مهمتها بـ: «مؤازرة الجيش اللبناني لبسط سيادة الدولة على أراضيها في الجنوب»، بعد أن تتحقق من «إخلاء «إسرائيل» لكلّ أرضٍ لبنانية دخلتها»، كما أناط بالأمين العام للأمم المتحدة مهمة «السعي لإيجاد حلّ لمسالة مزارع شبعا اللبنانية التي تحتلها «إسرائيل»».
وهكذا ولد القرار 1701 الذي، على رغم ما تضمّنه من ثغرات لمصلحة «إسرائيل» ومن عدم توازن، وعلى رغم ميله الفاضح لتحقيق مكاسب «إسرائيلية» على حساب لبنان، لم يعط قوات يونيفيل الحق بالقيام بمهمات أساسية تريدها «إسرائيل»، لم يعطها الحق بالعمل منفردة استقلالاً عن الجيش اللبناني، ولم يعطها حق التفتيش والتعقب داخل وخارج بقعة العمليات المحددة في جنوب الليطاني، ولم يعطها الحق بممارسة أي نوع من الأنواع القتالية وحفظ الأمن، وبالتالي قيّد لجوءها إلى اطلاق النار وحدّده بحالتين فقط: حالة الدفاع المشروع عن النفس، وفقاً لقاعدة التناسب والضرورة، وحالة مؤازرة الجيش اللبناني بناء لطلبه عند قيامه بمهمة عملانية داخل بقعة العمليات.
هذه القيود منعت تحوّل قوات يونيفيل إلى قوات قتالية في مواجهة المقاومة وجمهورها والشعب اللبناني في الجنوب، وفقاً لما تريد «إسرائيل»، ما جعل أميركا غير راضية على الصيغة النهائية للقرار 1701، ولكنها قبلت به وهي تضمر تطويرها بالأمر الواقع الميداني المستتبع لاحقاً بتعديل للنص في مجلس الأمن، وبالفعل حاولت الوحدات العسكرية الجديدة التي التحقت باليونيفيل لتعززها، حاولت فرض الأمر الواقع المطلوب، فاصطدمت بالأهالي وجمهور المقاومة وبالقوى والشخصيات الوطنية، فتراجعت، لكن أميركا بقيت على اصرارها للتعديل الذي تطمح إليه في كلّ مرة يعرض فيها أمر التجديد لليونيفيل. اصرار كان ولا يزال يصطدم برفض لبناني وعدم تأييد دولي كاف لتمريره في مجلس الأمن فيسقط.
لكن أميركا لم تيأس واستمرت منذ العام 2006 قائمة على محاولة التعديل، وعلى رغم الفشل فأنها تكرّر المحاولة، وأخيراً حاولت استغلال الوضع اللبناني الواهن والمتردّي سياسياً ومالياً واقتصادياً، وأوحت للأمين العام للأمم المتحدة بزيارة لبنان حاملاً مطالب ورسائل ظاهرة، وأخرى باطنة وهي الأهم، أما الأولى فتتعلق بالاصلاحات وضرورتها والانتخابات وحتميتها، وبالوضع الاقتصادي ومدى الإلحاح في معالجته لتوفير احتياجات المواطن، وكانت هذه المسائل القناع الذي يخفي الطلبات الحقيقة لأميركا و»إسرائيل»، التي حملها غوتيريش إلى لبنان وتتضمّن:
–
تعديل قواعد الاشتباك لليونيفيل بما يحقق رغبة إسرائيلية أميركية عمرها 15 عاماً، وقد عبّر غوتيريش عن الأمر بقوله «وجوب أن تتمتع اليونيفيل بحرية الوصول والعمل الكامل ومن دون عوائق في جميع أنحاء منطقة عملياتها بموجب القرار 1701»، وهو يقصد تمكين اليونيفيل من القيام بالمهام الثلاث التي حجبت عنها بموجب القرار 1701، كما سبق وذكرنا أعلاه «العمل المنفرد المستقل عن الجيش، التفتيش والتعقب، اللجوء إلى القوة لمعالجة ما ترى ضرورة التدخل فيه وفقاً لاستنسابها».
–
القفز فوق مزارع شبعا التي قصّر الأمين العام في إيجاد حل لها حتى الآن، وفصلها عن الحدود اللبنانية ومعالجة الوضع على الحدود البرية في شكل يسقط حدود بوليه نيوكمب، ويتمسك بالخط الوهمي المسمّى «الخط الأزرق»، وهو الخط الذي تعمل به الأمم المتحدة خلافاً لقواعد القانون الدولي، من دون أن يقدم أيّ ضمانات حول انسحاب «إسرائيل» من المناطق الـ13 التي تعتدي عليها شمال هذا الخط والحدود.
–
معالجة ملف الحدود البحرية بما يلبّي الإملاء الأميركي والمطالب «الإسرائيلية»، وذلك بتراجع لبنان عن خط الـ29 والتفاوض حول الخط 23 مع الإيحاء بامكانية إعطاء لبنان بعض المساحات جنوبي هذا الخط، ليضمن له حقل قانا مقابل ضمان كامل حقل كاريش لـ»إسرائيل».
وقد سرّبت أوساط قريبة من الأمم المتحدة أن غوتيريش سمع إجابات ايجابية من بعض المسؤولين اللبنانيين حول عروضه، من دون أن تصل تلك الاجابات إلى حدّ التزام موثق ومكتوب، بسبب الوضع السياسي المعقد الذي يمرّ به لبنان، لكنه تلقى نوعاً من ضمان أو التزام هذا البعض بتسهيلات ما مستقبلاً.
ويبدو أن غوتيريش أراد أن يختبر جدية ما سمع، أو أراد أن تفرض اليونيفيل وبوجوده في لبنان أمراً واقعاً يحاكي ما تتمناه في النقطة الأولى أعلاه، فأطلقت دورية عملانية إلى شقرا إحدى بلدات الجنوب من دون تنسيق مع الجيش، في مهمة تثير الريبة، ما حمل سكان البلدة على التصدي لها ومنعها من إكمال المهمة، فاضطر الجيش اللبناني للتدخل لإخراج الدورية الإيرلندية من أزقة البلدة وتأمين سلامتها، في مشهد أفهم غوتيريش أن ما ظنه أو ما قد سمعه من بعض المسؤولين لن يصرف في الميدان، حيث أكد الأهالي أن ما لم تستطع مناورات أميركا أن تفرضه في عقد ونصف لن يحققه غوتيريش في يوم ونصف.
أما عن الحدود بشقيها البري والبحري فإنني أعتقد أنّ أحداً من المسؤولين لا يثق بأنه يملك «القدرة أو الامكانية أو حتى النية»، لتلبية مطلب أميركا الذي حمله غوتيريش، وأن حالها عندما يحين وقت التنفيذ الجدي، لن يكون أفضل من حال محاولة تغيير قواعد الاشتباك، إذ أنه على رغم كل ما هو قائم من سوء في لبنان على الصعد الاقتصادية والسياسية والمالية، يبقى هناك عناصر ثلاثة تشكل ضمان الحقوق اللبنانية، في طليعتها الجيش والمقاومة والقوي الوطنية من هذا الشعب، الذي على رغم الجوع والفقر والإذلال لا يزال يحتضن تلك القوى التي تحتضن حقوقه، ما يقود إلى القول إن مهمة غوتيريش في دوافعها ومقاصدها الأصلية لم ولن تتوصل إلى إعطاء «إسرائيل» ما تريد، ولكن يبقى الحذر واجبا فمحاولاتهم لن تتوقف.
Mahdi Al-Mashat says the UN Security Council’s positions in Yemen absolve the perpetrators of responsibility.
Head of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen Mahdi Al-Mashat
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Yemen’s Supreme Political Council President, Mahdi Al-Mashat, stated that “the role of the United Nations in Yemen was negative via political cover for crimes of Saudi aggression.”
“We are surprised by the Security Council’s and the Secretary- General’s positions that hold accountable the victim and absolve the perpetrator of responsibility,” he added, noting that “the recent Security Council statement, which was accompanied by coalition raids on civilians, is clear evidence of the council’s bias.”
Al-Mashat emphasized that the UN’s continued adoption of a biased policy renders its role “worthless to the people of the world,” noting that the failure to renew the UN group of experts is evidence that proves the reality of a continued bias against Yemen.
The suffering of Yemen, according to Al-Mashat, comes from the rejection of international laws and covenants that consider the aggression from the coalition as “war crimes and genocide.”
Days ago, the head of the Sanaa negotiation delegation, Mohammed Abdulsalam, stated that the “blind bias” of the Security Council has contributed to the prolongation of the conflict in Yemen.
Abdulsalam stressed that Yemen, in a position of self-defense, “continues to repel the aggression with every possible defense.”
Last Wednesday, the UN Security Council denounced “the Yemeni Army and Popular Committees’ armed strikes on the Saudi-led coalition”, urging an end to the military escalation in the Marib Governorate in Yemen.
The members of the Security Council demanded an “immediate nationwide ceasefire” in Yemen, citing Resolution 2565.
Zarif made the remarks in a Thursday tweet, comparing Netanyahu’s fate to that of other major anti-Iran figures in the US, who were the Israeli PM’s close allies in his plots against Tehran, including former US President Donald Trump, his former national security advisor John Bolton, and his secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
“Netanyahu has joined the disgraceful journey of his anti-Iran co-conspirators—Bolton, Trump and Pompeo—into the dustbin of history,” Iran’s foreign minister said.
Zarif asserted that Iran continues to stand tall, pointing out that the same fate has been repeated for Iranians’ ill-wishers over several millennia, adding, “Time to change course.”
According to a statement by the UN General Assembly, as of January 13, 2021, ten member states were subject to the provisions of Article 19 of the Charter, namely Iran, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Libya, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Under Article 19 of the Charter of the United Nations, members whose arrears equal or exceed the amount of their contributions due for two preceding full years lose their voting rights.
The Charter also gives the General Assembly the authority to decide “that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the member,” and in that case a country can continue to vote.
The top Iranian diplomat also published his previous letter to Guterres, in which he conveyed Iran’s “strong dismay” over his announcement, saying the decision is “fundamentally flawed, entirely unacceptable and completely unjustified” due to Washington’s illegal sanctions on Iran.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is fully committed to fulfill[ing] its financial obligations to the United Nations and will continue to make every effort to settle the arrears in the payment of its financial contribution to the UN and other international organizations as soon as the underlying imposed conditions, i.e. the US unlawful unilateral coercive measures, is removed,” Zarif’s letter read.
Zarif’s tweet came after earlier in the day, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the country’s payment of its UN membership dues has been made possible through a South Korean bank and the debt will be paid soon.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always promptly acted to pay its membership dues to the United Nations, and the problem that arose last year was due to the blocking of the payment route by the United States,” Khatibzadeh told IRNA.
He said the United Nations Secretariat is completely aware of the details of the issue, which he said was not Iran’s fault whatsoever.
According to Khatibzadeh, in negotiations with the UN Treasury, Iran had proposed to transfer the money from its financial resources in South Korea, and it was decided that the Treasury try to remove barriers to the money transfer and pursue acquiring a permit from OFAC (the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control) for the transfer.
“The permit was recently issued and the way for withdrawing the membership dues from Iran’s account in the [South] Korean bank and transferring it to the UN account in Seoul has been paved, and this payment will be made soon,” he added.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 