Tel Aviv’s goal of dismantling the UN agency in the name of security is a strategic move aimed not only at depriving Palestinian refugees of lifesaving assistance, but completely eradicating the notion that they will one day return to the lands they were expelled from.
William Van Wagenen @WVanwagenen Know Me More..William Van Wagenen is a writer for the Libertarian Institute. He has written extensively on the Syrian war, with a specific focus on the role of US planners in sparking and exacerbating the conflict. William holds a master’s degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University and survived a kidnapping in the Sinjar region of Iraq in 2007.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
The UN agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved in the besieged enclave.
To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled.
UNRWA must be destroyed
In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the organization.
The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege and bombardment of the coastal enclave.
However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation.
The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:
First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity.
Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should Hamas be dismantled.
A sequence of events
According to a report by TheNew York Times, the “sequence of events” that led the US to suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.
Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks.
After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the employees, a UN official said.
The Guardianreported that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by Weissbrod.
“No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.”
Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence.
Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he said.
How did the US know?
The same New York Times report notes that UNRWA informed US officials about the allegations on 24 January. Just two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of funding to UNRWA.
Shockingly, the State Department made the announcement amid reports that Gaza was on the brink of famine, and despite acknowledging that “UNRWA plays a critical role in providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians, including essential food, medicine, shelter.”
Like Lazzarini, Blinken made the decision without seeking any evidence from Israel, but solely based on the supposedly serious nature of the allegations alone. Blinken justified his decision to suspend aid to starving Palestinians by saying, “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible.”
In a seemingly coordinated effort, other countries – including Germany, Britain, and Australia – swiftly followed suit. Even Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged suspending aid without first receiving any evidence from Israel or even asking Lazzarini to share any evidence he might have.
The funding crisis escalated to such an extent that Juliette Touma, the UNRWA director of communications, said that after “decades of working together,” in “just over 24 hours, nine of our donors suspended funding to UNRWA.”
Another dodgy dossier
As criticism of the aid suspensions mounted, Israeli foreign ministry officials released a dossier to several foreign news organizations.
But after seeing the dossier, both the Financial Times and the UK’s Channel 4 reported that it provided “no evidence” for the claims.
Former UNRWA head Chris Gunness compared it to the “dodgy dossier” used by Tony Blair to take Britain to war in Iraq.
“There is no actual evidence. There are accusations,” Gunness concluded.
Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, tried to justify its refusal to provide any actual evidence by claiming, “the very nature of the allegations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it has with UNRWA.”
“They think that we can give them intelligence information, knowing that some of their employees work for Hamas? Are you serious?” he asked.
But Israeli propagandist and spokesperson Eylon Levy declined to say if Israel had provided evidence even to the US and UK governments. “I’m not personally aware of what material may have been passed on between our intelligence agencies,” he stated to Channel 4 when pressed for proof of the claims.
Links to Hamas?
The Israeli foreign ministry continued to implement the three-step leaked plan to destroy UNRWA by making additional allegations of UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas.
On 29 January, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported claims based on Israeli intelligence that “1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza has links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist militant groups.”
The article also provided no evidence, citing only Israeli intelligence, and was co-written by Carrie Keller-Lynn, an American who volunteered for the Israeli military and has a personal relationship with an Israeli army spokesperson.
Even if true, the allegations are meaningless. Hamas is the governing party in Gaza, making it self-evident that many UNRWA employees would be sympathetic or have family ties to the resistance movement.
Similarly, it would be unsurprising if an employee of an Israeli NGO or aid group was sympathetic to the Israeli army or had family members in the ruling Likud party.
As Haaretz noted, UNRWA employees in the West Bank and other countries where the organization operates are usually more aligned with whatever Palestinian faction is dominant in that area.
‘We could not verify this’
The Israeli foreign ministry’s plan to paint UNRWA as linked to Hamas soon continued with new and bizarre allegations that Hamas had placed a massive data center directly underneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
The Times of Israelclaimed that the data center was “built precisely under the location where Israel would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.”
But Israel has been bombing UNRWA schools and other UN facilities for decades, including when large numbers of civilians have been sheltering in them. No Hamas leader would imagine this would provide it any protection.
But as OSINT analyst Michael Kobs has shown, the alleged data center the Israeli army showed to foreign journalists was not under the UNRWA headquarters.
Kobs also notes that when Tageschau journalist Sophie van der Tann was taken through a tunnel to see the alleged data center, she stated, “We could not verify” it was under the UNRWA headquarters.
Erasing the right of return
But why is Israel determined to destroy UNRWA?
One reason is Israel’s ongoing effort to slowly starve Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
At the beginning of the war on 7 October, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant notoriously ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” The late January campaign to suspend UNRWA funding then came at a time when “famine” was already “around the corner” in Gaza, according to UN Emergency Relief Chief Martin Griffiths. Israeli officials knew that suspending funding for UNRWA at this time would only bring famine closer. One Israeli military official acknowledged to the WSJ on 13 February that “Without UNRWA, there is no humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
But there is another reason Israel wants to destroy UNRWA, which predates the current war.
Palestinian political analyst and researcher Hanin Abou Salem explained that Israel wants to dismantle UNRWA because it transmits refugee status from generation to generation, which keeps the right of return for Palestinian refugees alive and “ensures that their hopes for returning to their ancestral homeland do not perish with the death of the original 1948 refugees.”
If UNRWA is dismantled and replaced by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will guarantee that Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to the homes and lands from which Israel forcibly expelled their grandparents during the Nakba.
In 2017, Israel launched a propaganda campaign against UNRWA and succeeded in convincing the Trump administration to cut around $300 million in funding to the organization the following year, only for the Biden administration to restore $235 million in 2021.
Destroying an idea
But with the start of the war on 7 October, Israel feels it has a second chance, not only to destroy the right of return, but also the “idea” of armed struggle to achieve it.
Noga Arbell, a researcher at the right-wing Kohelet Forum, recently explained that UNRWA needs to be “annihilated” because it is the “source of the idea.”
“It gives birth to more and more terrorists in all kinds of ways. UNRWA needs to be wiped out immediately – now – or Israel will miss the window of opportunity.”
UNRWA allegedly ‘gives birth to terrorists’ through its 706 schools, where some 543,075 Palestine refugee children receive free basic education.
In Gaza, UNRWA uses Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks and supplements these with its own materials. Israel has long been irked that these textbooks include lessons on the life of one of the most famous symbols of Palestinian armed resistance, an 18-year-old young woman and Palestinian refugee born in Lebanon, Dalal al-Mughrabi.
In 1978, Mughrabi led a group of Palestinian guerrillas from PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party to carry out an operation in Israel.
According to the Israeli version of events, Mughrabi “led one of the deadliest suicide attacks in Israel’s history,” by hijacking a bus and taking its passengers hostage on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. During the operation, the bus exploded, and “38 Israelis were murdered, including 13 children.”
Israel claims that UNRWA is, therefore, teaching “mass murder” by using PA books that encourage everyone to be like Mughrabi.
However, Palestinians claim that Israeli forces killed the hostages.
You can kill a revolutionary, but not the revolution
According to a 2008 report in the Guardian, Mughrabi and the Palestinian guerillas intended to attack the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and hijacked two buses carrying civilians on the coastal road near Haifa. Along the way, they engaged in an intense 15-hour gun battle with Israeli forces.
Palestinians maintain the bus exploded, killing the guerillas and hostages, after it was fired on from the air by Israeli helicopters or elite Israel commandos, in a possible early instance of the mass Hannibal Directive.
Israeli forces implemented the Hannibal Directive on 7 October, killing large numbers of their own civilians – and burning many of them alive – using attack helicopters, tanks, and drones, while blaming all these deaths on Hamas.
Even if Israel succeeds in executing its plan to destroy UNRWA, while starving and bombing tens of thousands to death in Gaza, it will not be able to erase the spirit of Dalal al-Mughrabi and the thousands of martyrs like her who have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Palestinians.
Within 24 hours of the unsubstantiated accusations against UNRWA, the US, the UK, and 14 other nations suspended funding to the organization the Wall Street Journal described as the “main pillar of operations to move food aid, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza.”
The abruptness of these cuts was particularly jolting in light of the looming threat of famine, as highlighted by Griffiths, who warned that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
These drastic measures were instigated by allegations based on a dubious six-page dossier, arguably part of a meticulously crafted plan orchestrated by Israel’s foreign ministry, aimed at dismantling the humanitarian and educational infrastructure serving internally displaced Palestinians.
This concerted effort to undermine UNRWA is nothing short of a calculated strategy to exert control over the narrative surrounding Palestinian refugees and to once again reshape the demographics in Palestine.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
For the 114th consecutive day, the Palestinian resistance remains steadfast in the face of a Zionist aggression against the Gaza Strip despite the killing machine launched against Gazans.
This sustained conflict has garnered attention due to a perceived tacit approval from the United States for Israeli actions, leading to a multitude of casualties among defenseless civilians in the besieged territory. Complicity from Western countries and select Arab regimes, coupled with the silence of those advocating for human rights, further intensifies the gravity of the situation.
Throughout the ongoing aggression, the Palestinian resistance has incurred daily losses, particularly since the commencement of the ground offensive in Gaza. These losses contribute to the erosion of the perceived strength of the opposing forces, as documented by the resistance fighters, showcasing the failure of the Israeli forces to make significant advances within the Strip.
Amidst these challenges, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, announced fierce clashes with occupation soldiers in Khan Younis, highlighting the ongoing intensity of the conflict.
Simultaneously, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, reported targeting two Merkava tanks in the Al-Amal neighborhood, demonstrating their continued efforts to resist the Israeli forces. The Al-Quds Brigades also announced success in downing various types of combat drones deployed in the skies above Gaza.
As the conflict persists, the Kiryati Reserve Brigade concluded its mission in Khan Yunis, according to the Occupation Army Radio. However, the absence of a comprehensive military plan for the occupation in Gaza leads to a reliance on force mobilization, making them susceptible to counterattacks.
The Al-Quds Brigades announced actions, including bombings of supply lines and clashes in the central Gaza Strip, further emphasizing the ongoing resistance efforts. Meanwhile, rockets continue to be launched from Gaza towards settlements like “Sderot” and “Niram.”
Despite Massacres…
On the 114th day of the conflict, the Zionist enemy army reported committing 19 new massacres within the last 24 hours, resulting in 165 deaths and 290 injuries. This brings the total number of martyrs in Gaza to 26,422 and 65,877 wounded, according to the Ministry of Health.
The conflict’s toll is not limited to casualties alone. Civilians in Gaza suffer from shortages of water, food, and decent living conditions exacerbated by the harsh weather. Israeli bombings continue to target homes and hospitals, resulting in additional casualties and injuries. UNRWA warns of an impending famine in the Gaza Strip, emphasizing the dire humanitarian situation affecting more than two million people in the region.
In a tragic incident, an Israeli airstrike targeted a residence west of the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, resulting in the death and injury of two Palestinians. The devastating consequences of the attack were further underscored as one individual was declared a martyr, and four others sustained injuries, necessitating immediate medical attention at Nasser Hospital.
Al-Manar’s correspondent reported that 8 martyrs and a number of wounded were killed in an Israeli bombing on a house for the Salmi family in the Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City.
The gravity of the situation in Khan Younis was highlighted by the Al-Manar reporter on the ground, shedding light on the aftermath of the Israeli bombing that specifically targeted the Jourat Al-Aqqad area.
The continuing airstrikes and gunfire around Al-Amal Hospital were also reported, exacerbating the challenges faced by medical facilities in the region. The Palestinian Red Crescent sounded the alarm, revealing that the oxygen supply at Al-Amal Hospital had been depleted due to the prolonged siege imposed on the area.
Worryingly, the Israeli occupation army has intensified its bombing campaign in Khan Younis over the past few days, with a particular focus on hospitals and shelters for displaced people.
Despite Calls…
Politically, there is increasing pressure from the West to halt funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Nine countries, including Britain, the United States, and Canada, have suspended their funding, citing accusations against some UNRWA employees.
The agency’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the decision, stating it threatens humanitarian work in the region, particularly in Gaza.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has issued an appeal to donor countries, urging them to ensure the continuation of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza. This plea comes in response to the temporary suspension of funding by nine countries, casting a shadow over the agency’s crucial humanitarian work.
UNRWA’s lifesaving aid in Gaza threatened by donors recklessly suspending aid. UNRWA has rightly terminated the contracts of those alleged to violate our neutrality principle. Donors, do not starve children for the sins of a few individual aid workers. https://t.co/nUbeX2Iwrp
Guterres addressed the situation in a statement, revealing the termination of service for nine out of twelve UNRWA employees implicated in the alleged attack on Israel on October 7. The Secretary-General emphasized that any UN employee involved in terrorist acts, including the aforementioned attack, would be held accountable, potentially facing criminal prosecution. Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, expressed concern over the dire conditions faced by the people of Gaza, describing their suffering as unimaginable horrors and deprivation. He stressed the importance of not abandoning the people of Gaza during such a critical time.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur concerned with Palestine, took a strong stance against the countries that suspended their funding for UNRWA. In a post on the “X” platform, Albanese argued that such actions amount to participating in “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
She highlighted the timing of the funding suspension, occurring the day after the International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s demands to drop the “genocide” lawsuit filed against it by South Africa. Albanese accused these countries of punishing millions of Palestinians and violating their obligations under the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
Former British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned his country’s decision to join others in suspending funding for UNRWA, labelling it as “collective punishment.” He criticized the British government for what he deemed as moral decadence toward the Palestinians, emphasizing the need for a more compassionate approach.
يؤخذ على إسرائيل أنها لا تمتلك تصوراً لليوم التالي للحرب. حتى الولايات المتحدة والغرب الداعم لها، يناقشون مع قادة الاحتلال، بصيغة أنه يجب أن يكون هناك تصور واضح لمرحلة ما بعد الحرب. لكن كل هؤلاء يعرفون أن الحرب التي شنّها العدوّ رغماً عنه، لم تنطلق بتصور مسبق حول أهدافها القابلة للتحقق. وهي مثّلت رداً انتقامياً مهولاً، وترافق مع نقاش لدى قيادة العدو حول أهدافه وفقاً لمجريات الميدان. لكن العدوّ قال منذ اليوم الأول، إنه يشن حرباً يهدف من خلالها الى إنهاء التهديد العسكري الذي تمثّله المقاومة في قطاع غزة، ما جعل تصوّر العدوّ لتنفيذ المهمة عبارة عن أمر واحد: طرد السكان من غزة!هذا الهدف المجنون، هو خيار واقعي وعقلاني بالنسبة إلى قيادة العدو، كونه يمثّل جوهر ما تمثّله حركة الاستيطان التي قامت عليها إسرائيل. وهي الحركة المستمرة في الضفة الغربية اليوم، وفكرتها بسيطة للغاية: احشر السكان وأخضعهم، ثم ادفعهم إلى المغادرة طوعاً أو غصباً عند الاضطرار. وهذا ما يحصل في الضفة الغربية، برغم كل الاتفاقات والمعاهدات وخلافه من التفاصيل المتصلة بالتسويات بين السلطة الفلسطينية وكيان العدو. يشن العدو حملته العسكرية المجنونة. وما تحقق حتى اللحظة بالنسبة إليه لا يمثّل الا القليل من سلّة أهدافه. وبينما يواجه معضلة كبيرة في تحقيق هدف سحق المقاومة وانتزاع حرية أسراه بالقوة، فهو نجح جزئياً في معركة تحويل القطاع الى مكان غير صالح للعيش. وقد دمّر حتى الآن ثلث المباني السكنية، كما أخرج من الخدمة أكثر من 90 في المئة من المرافق المدنية والخدمية للدولة وحتى للقطاع الخاص. في سياق خطته لدفع أبناء القطاع للبحث عن مكان آخر للعيش فيه.
«ما قبل اليوم التالي»
وقد ورد الى جهات فلسطينية بازرة، أن إسرائيل تعتبر نفسها معنيّة الآن بخطة «ما قبل اليوم التالي»، وهي تتصرف على أنها لن تكون عرضةً لأي ضغط جدّي من جانب الغرب طوال الفترة المقبلة. وهي تتصرف وفق معطيات تشير الى خطة عمل تستمر لفترة طويلة من الزمن، وليس لأسبايع قليلة فقط. ويقول مسؤول فلسطيني لـ»الأخبار» إن العدو يفكر في إعادة التعامل مع قطاع غزة عسكرياً وأمنياً بطريقة مختلفة بعد الذي واجهه في الشهرين الماضيين. ويضيف: العدوّ يقوم الآن بتجارب عملانية لأجل اختيار الأماكن التي يقدر على التمركز فيها من دون أن يعرّض قواته لخطر دائم، وأنه، في المقابل، يعزّز عمله الأمني لأجل القيام بضربات عسكرية ذات طابع أمني، ويعمل بالتعاون مع الغرب على أكبر عملية إحاطة استخبارية لكل شيء في القطاع، ويسعى إلى تحصيل معطيات تفيده في الوصول الى أماكن يوجد فيها أسرى، أو اصطياد القادة البارزين في حركة حماس، وبقية فصائل المقاومة. وأشار المسؤول نفسه الى أن الجهد الذي يقوم به العدو في إحدى مناطق خان يونس الآن، ينطلق من «قناعة» بأن هذه المنطقة يوجد فيها قادة أساسيون في «حماس»، كما يعتقد أنها المكان الذي يحتجز فيه أبرز ضباطه وجنوده من الأسرى.
كلام المسؤول الفلسطيني، تشرحه مصادر ديبلوماسية عربية مقيمة في القاهرة، تحت عنوان «التفكير العملاني الجديد حيال مستقبل القطاع». وتقول هذه المصادر إنه تفكير يتخذ طابعاً إنسانياً بالعلن، لكنه يستبطن تصوراً سياسياً وأمنياً. وتكشف هذه المصادر عن «خطة متكاملة» عرضت أخيراً على السلطات المصرية ممثلة بمندوبين عن وزير المخابرات العامة اللواء عباس كامل، وبحضور مسؤولين من الولايات المتحدة وإسرائيل. وأن الخطة تحظى الى جانب دعم أميركا وإسرائيل بدعم مباشر من بريطانيا وفرنسا وألمانيا، وتؤدّي فيها الأردن والإمارات العربية المتحدة وتركيا دوراً كبيراً.
مشاركة مصرية وأردنية وتركية وإماراتية في تغطية النزوح القسري
وتقول المصادر إن مشاركة كل هذه الدول ستكون تحت عنوان الدعم الإنساني، وإن الخطة الجديدة وضعت بعد فشل المحاولة الأولى، التي حاول فيها مبعوث الإدارة الأميركية للشؤون الإنسانية ديفيد ساترفيلد فرض إقامة مخيم كبير على الشاطئ الجنوبي الغربي للقطاع، يكون تحت سلطة الأمم المتحدة، لاستيعاب نحو مليون فلسطيني من أبناء شمال غزة. وقد جاء موقف الأمم المتحدة مفاجئاً للجانب الأميركي، من خلال إعلان أمينها العام أنطونيو غوتيريش رفضه الفكرة، ثم تولّي مساعده للشؤون الإنسانية مارتن غريفيت شرح مخاطر الفكرة. وكذلك عملت لين هاستينغز منسقة الأمم المتحدة للشؤون الإنسانية في الأراضي المحتلة، على إبلاغ الجهات الإسرائيلية العاملة على الأرض برفض الفكرة لاعتبارات كثيرة. وأدى ذلك الى حملة شنتها الولايات المتحدة وإسرائيل ضدهم، على فريق الأمم المتحدة، وصلت إلى حد إبعاد هاستينغز من القدس بعد سحب الإقامة منها. وقالت المصادر إن الذي حصل هو تخلّي الأميركيين والإسرائيليين عن خطة «المنطقة الإنسانية الآمنة» التي كان يفترض أن تقام في منطقة المواصي على الشاطئ الجنوبي الغربي للقطاع. ومع استمرار العمليات العسكرية المجنونة، عاد العدوّ، بدعم من ساترفيلد، لوضع خطة جديدة، تقضي بإقامة «تجمّعات إنسانية آمنة» في عدة مناطق من جنوب القطاع، تكون خاضعة أمنياً لرقابة مباشرة من قوات الاحتلال، ويصار الى وضع الناس فيها ضمن خطة طويلة الأمد، ولو قالوا في العلن إنها «مرحلة مؤقتة الى حين انتهاء الحرب والتفاهم على طريقة إدارة القطاع من جديد».
بنود خطة ساترفيلد للتهجير داخل القطاع
وفق معلومات خاصة بـ»الأخبار» فإن البرنامج الذي يقوده الديبلوماسي الأميركي ديفيد ساترفيلد يشتمل على خطوات عملانية؛ من بينها ما تقوم به قوات الاحتلال نفسها، وكذلك بالنسبة إلى أدوار الآخرين. وبحسب المعلومات، فإن الإجراءات العملانية الهادفة الى تحقيق هذا البرنامج تشمل الآتي:
أولاً: أبلغت إسرائيل جميع الأطراف أنها لن تغادر قطاع غزة حتى ولو توقف إطلاق النار، الى حين حصولها على ضمانات عملانية بنزع سلاح المقاومة ومنع حماس من إدارة الوضع المدني في القطاع.
ثانياً: أن إسرائيل في حال اضطرّت، تحت الضغط، إلى وقف العمليات الواسعة، فستلجأ الى وقف الغارات المفتوحة والقصف العشوائي، مقابل برنامج عمليات خاصة، كبيرة أو صغيرة، والتي لا تستثني أي مكان تعتقد إسرائيل أنه مقرّ للمقاومين وقياداتهم أو مراكز احتجاز الأسرى الإسرائيليين.
ثالثاً: سوف يبقى قرار إقفال شمال غزة قائماً، ولن يجري السماح تحت أي ظرف بإعادة ترميم القطاعات المدنية، ولا بتشغيل أي مرافق صحية أو خدماتية أو إنسانية، كما سيبقى الشمال ممنوعاً من استقبال المساعدات، وأن ما سيتمّ الموافقة على دخوله هو مجرد إغاثات غذائية محدودة.
رابعاً: استمرار عملية الإبعاد لمن بقي من سكان غزة باتجاه الجنوب، وأن قوات الاحتلال عمدت في الأماكن التي توغّلت فيها، ووجدت فيها مواطنين فلسطينين، الى اعتقال الرجال وإذلالهم، وإطلاق سراح بعضهم، لأجل أن يبلغوا بقية السكان بأنهم غير مرغوب في بقائهم في منازلهم، وأن كل من تراه إسرائيل موجوداً في أيّ منزل في شمال القطاع، سوف تعمد الى إبعاد النساء والأولاد جنوباً واعتقال الرجال بمعزل عن أعمارهم وأوضاعهم.
خامساً: شنّ عملية تدمير وتهجير في مناطق وسط وجنوب القطاع شبيهة بما حصل في الشمال، ودفع الناس جميعاً صوب شريط يلفّ القطاع من جهة الجنوب والغرب، ويمتد من أقصى نقطة في شرق رفح، باتجاه منطقة دير البلح في شمال القسم الجنوبي من القطاع.
سادساً: سوف يتم إقفال كل الطرقات التي يتحرّك عليها المواطنون في جميع أنحاء القطاع، وسوف يكون الطريق الوحيد المفتوح الى هذا الشريط عبر طريق واحد يمتدّ من أقصى نقطة في شرق رفح حتى دير البلح، لكن من جهة البحر فقط (انظر الخريطة).
سابعاً: سوف يتم إنشاء ثلاث مناطق رئيسية لتجمّعات النازحين، واحدة في منطقة دير البلح وتتسع لنحو 200 ألف إنسان، وثانية في منطقة المواصي (جنوب غرب القطاع) وتتسع لنحو 800 ألف مواطن، وثالثة في الشريط الحدودي لرفح مع الأراضي المحتلة ومصر، وتتسع أيضاً لـ 800 ألف مواطن، مع مركز رابع في منطقة محاذية لجنوب شرق مدينة خان يونس.
ثامناً: تشير الخطة الإسرائيلية – الأميركية، الى أن الدعم الإنساني في هذه البقع سوف يتم من خلال برنامج تشرف عليه لجنة تضم الى جانب إسرائيل، كلاً من: الولايات المتحدة الأميركية، بريطانيا، مصر، تركيا، الأردن ودولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة.
وأشار المرجع الى أن المؤسف هو أن الدول الأوروبية والعربية المشاركة في المفاوضات تسهّل للعدو خطته، كاشفاً أن ساترفيلد يقول بأنه حصل على موافقة الإمارات لأن تكون هي الطرف الأساسي الموجود في «المنطقة الإنسانية» في رفح، وأنها ستعمل بالتعاون مع الأردنيين على إدارة الوضع الصحي والمعيشي في هذه المنطقة. وسوف يقوم الجانبان الأردني والإماراتي ببناء مستشفيات ميدانية مؤقتة في هذه المنطقة. ويقول المرجع: لقد حصل فعلياً أن جهزت دولة الإمارات العتاد اللوجستي الخاص بهذه المهمة، وهي أدخلت بالفعل كمية من الشاحنات الى تلك المنطقة. وأن النقاش مع إسرائيل انتهى الى تفاهم بأن المساعدات الآتية من الأردن أو التي تقدمها الإمارات تمر عبر معبر كرم أبو سالم الى هذه المنطقة.
أما تركيا، فسوف تقوم بدور أساسيّ في منطقة المواصي الواقعة في جنوب غرب القطاع وبالقرب من الشاطئ. وسوف يكون هناك دور أساسي لبريطانيا، وسوف يصار الى البتّ بمسألة إقامة مستشفى عام على الشاطئ المقابل لهذهالمنطقة، مع شرط بأن لا يصار الى بناء أي مرافق دائمة في تلك المنطقة، بل يصار في مرحلة أولى الى استقدام نحو 200 ألف خيمة خاصة بالعائلات لوضعها هناك، وأن الولايات المتحدة ستقدم مساعدة مالية لبناء مرافق بنى تحتيىة وخدماتية في هذه المنطقة.
وحول الدور الفرنسي، قالت المصادر إن باريس لا تجد ترحيباً من أحد. حتى المستشفى الذي أقامته في منطقة العريش، يوجد فيه اليوم 20 جريحاً فقط، لأن مصر لم تسمح بنقل أعداد كبيرة من الجرحى الى داخل أراضيها، والكل يعرف بأن المستشفيات المصرية في منطقة العريش قادرة على استقبال كل ما تقول فرنسا إنها مستعدة للقيام به.
مصر غاضبة… فقط!
بينما يقول زوار عواصم خليجية إن ملك الأردن عبد الله الثاني كان في غاية الذعر من ملف التهجير، فإن هؤلاء يتحدثون بقلق عن الموقف المصري الذي لا يجدون فيه سقفاً مرتفعاً، من شأنه تعطيل برامج العدو. وقال أحد هؤلاء: عندما جاء أنتوني بلينكن للاجتماع مع وزراء الخارجية العرب في عمان، كان قد سبقه وزير الخارجية الأردني أيمن الصفدي في اتصالات جعلت موقف السعودية ومصر أكثر تشدداً. وقال المصدر نفسه إن الأردن تحدث بلهجة مختلفة عن كل ما سبق، وإن أحد الزوار الأجانب سأل الملك عبد الله عن سبب حدّته، فأجاب الأخير بأن مجرّد نجاح ولو جزئي لخطة تهجير أبناء غزة، فإن اليوم التالي سيكون عبارة عن تهجير مئات ألوف الفلسطينيين من الضفة الغربية الى الأردن، مشيراً الى عمليات تهجير تحصل لعشرات العائلات الذين يعيشون بالقرب من المستوطنات والذين يتم الدفع بهم نحو المناطق «أ» و»ب». ونقل عنه أيضاً أن حرب غزة ستنتهي وقد صار أمامنا أمر واقع تمثّل في وجود آلاف العائلات الفلسطينية المبعدة قسراً عن منازلها في الضفة الغربية. وأن الجنون الذي يسيطر على حركة المستوطنين قد يفتح الأمر على ما هو أخطر. وبحسب المصدر نفسه، فإن الأنظار توجّهت صوب القاهرة التي أعلنت على لسان رئيسها مرات عديدة رفضها تهجير أبناء غزة. لكن العاملين على الأرض لا يلمسون هذا التشدد في طريقة تعامل المصريين مع ملف المساعدات الإنسانية. وروى المصدر أنه في مرحلة أولى من العمليات العسكرية الإسرائيلية في جنوب القطاع، لجأ جيش الاحتلال الى رمي منشورات للمواطنين الفلسطينيين تطلب إليهم الانتقال الى منطقة رفح وإلى المناطق القريبة من الحدود مع مصر، ما استدعى اجتماعاً سريعاً بين ضباط مصريين وآخرين من جيش الاحتلال الذين وعدوا بتعديل مضمون المنشور، ليصار بعده الى نشر خريطة المربعات التي تطلب فيها قوات الاحتلال من سكان الجنوب التوجه إليها باعتبارها مناطق آمنة. ومع ذلك، فإن المصريين لم يبادروا الى خطوات تظهر تمسكهم ببقاء أبناء القطاع في منازلهم، وإنه كان بمقدور مصر، مرات كثيرة، ممارسة الضغط العملاني لأجل إدخال كميات أكبر من المساعدات وعدد أكبر من الشاحنات الى داخل القطاع. ولكن الجانب المصري تنازل لطلبات العدو حيال التفتيش المسبق الذي أعاق عملية نقل المساعدات. كما أن الجانب المصري لم يقبل بفتح الباب لانتقال المئات من الجرحى للعلاج في مستشفيات مصرية أو في دول أخرى. وقال المرجع إن المصريين الغاضبين من ازدياد عدد النازحين الفلسطينيين في منطقة رفح يضغطون لأجل إقامة المنطقة الرابعة بالقرب من خان يونس، ويبدو أنهم حصلوا على موافقة مبدئية على إقامة مربع في تلك المنطقة، يكون خاضعاً لإشرافهم لناحية توزيع المساعدات الإنسانية. وبما يسمح بتقليص عدد النازحين من «خان يونس الكبرى» الى منطقة رفح.
الذكاء الاصطناعي و«تفييش» الغزيين في كثير من روايات أبناء شمال غزة عن رحلتهم الى الجنوب عبر شارع صلاح الدين، يرد الكثير من الكلام عن طريقة تصرف جنود الاحتلال الذين انتشروا بدباباتهم ونقاطهم العسكرية في بعض مفاصل الطريق. وكان العدو يطلب الى المارين على الطريق الالتفات نحو وجود قواته طوال الطريق، وعدم النظر الى الجانب الآخر من الطريق. وقد فسر البعض الخطوة بأن هدفها عدم جعل الناس يشاهدون عشرات الجثث الملقاة على الجهة الأخرى من الطريق. لكن مصدراً في الصليب الأحمر الدولي، رفض الكشف عن اسمه، قال لـ»الأخبار» إن ما يحصل عملياً هو أن قوات الاحتلال وضعت على بعض نقاطها العسكرية، على طول الطريق، كاميرات خاصة مرتبطة بجهاز يعمل وفق مبدأ الذكاء الاصطناعي، وكانت تقوم بعملية مسح بصري لوجه وطول وطبيعة جسم الذين يمرون على الطريق. وقال المصدر إن قيادات عسكرية إسرائيلية لم تنف رغبتها في إنجاز عملية شاملة لجميع أبناء القطاع، وهي تستهدف التمييز بين المدنيين والعسكريين، استناداً الى بنك معلومات لديها حول عناصر المقاومة. وقالت بأن هذه الخطوة سوف تبقى جزءاً من عمل قوات خاصة في جيش الاحتلال، حتى في مرحلة نقل النازحين الى المربعات التي يجري التخطيط لها.
وبحسب المصدر نفسه، فإن اسرائيل تبدو مهتمة أكثر من أي وقت بعملية «تفييش» لجميع أبناء القطاع، وأن الهدف منها ليس حصر العدد الفعلي للسكان ومن بقي منهم في مناطق الشمال أو رفض مغادرة منزله في مناطق الجنوب، بل ربط هذه الخطوة ببرامج المساعدات التي ستقدم للعائلات النازحة الى المربعات المذكورة. ويبدو أن قوات العدو تسعى أيضاً الى تشكيل قوائم خاصة بمن تفترضهم مقاتلين يمكن أن يكونوا قد عبروا مع المدنيين، وأنها فعلت الأمر بطريقة مكثفة خلال أيام الهدنة، لأجل مراقبة عناصر المقاومة الذين كان لهم دور في عمليات تبادل الأسرى والمعتقلين، إذ إن قوات الاحتلال تشكّ في أن هناك عمليات انتقال بين شمال القطاع وجنوبه، أو أن هذه العملية لا تتمّ فقط من تحت الأرض.
There is a reason why Palestinians are keen on releasing their prisoners, despite the heavy price they continue to pay for their freedom.
It may seem rational to ask the question: what is the point of releasing a few Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons if the price of doing so is the death of over 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza?
Even if all Palestinian prisoners – numbering about 7,000 – are released, they would not even amount to 30 percent of the total number of Palestinian dead and missing so far in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Strip.
The logic may sound even more puzzling when we consider that, between October 7 and November 28, Israel detained over 3,290 Palestinians in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem.
Namely, the number of Palestinian women and children detainees released – following several prisoner swaps between Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli army in the period between November 24 and November 30 – is insignificant compared to those who were detained during the same period.
But mathematical equations are irrelevant in liberation wars. If we resort to this kind of logic, then perhaps it is more rational for colonized nations and oppressed groups not to resist in the first place because doing so could multiply the harm inflicted upon them by their colonizers and oppressors.
While Israelis see their captives, whether civilians or military, held in Gaza in terms of numbers, Palestinians approach the issue from an entirely different perspective.
All Palestinians are captives, according to the reality on the ground, because all Palestinians are victims of Israeli colonialism, military occupation and apartheid. The difference between being a prisoner in Megiddo, Ofer, or Ramleh prison, for example, and being a prisoner in an isolated, walled-off Palestinian town under Israeli military Occupation in Area C in the West Bank is rather technical.
True, those in Megiddo are subjected to more violence and torture. They are denied proper food, medicine, and the freedom to move about. But how is that fundamentally different from the incarceration of 2.3 million people living in Gaza now?
Some would even argue that living in Gaza during a time of genocide is more confining and far less safe than being a political prisoner in Israel under ‘normal’ circumstances.
So clearly, the issue is not related to numbers but to power relations.
Under international law, Israel is the Occupying Power. This entitles Israel to certain rights per, for example, the Fourth Geneva Convention and numerous responsibilities. For decades, Israel has abused those ‘rights’ and completely ignored all its obligations. Over the same period, Palestinians have appealed to – even implored – the international community to enforce international law on Israel, unsuccessfully.
This was illustrated in the pitiful display by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on May 15. “Protect us,” he said repeatedly before making an analogy between Palestinians and animals. “Aren’t we human beings? Even animals should be protected. If you have an animal, won’t you protect it? Protect us!”
Most Palestinians know well that the US, West-dominated international institutions will not protect Palestinians based on any moral rationale or even their love for animals.
This realization dawned on Palestinians generations ago when the international community failed to enforce a single UN resolution on Israel. Regarding the ongoing Gaza genocide, it proved particularly irrelevant to the extent that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pronounced it outright when he said on November 8 that the UN has neither “money nor power” to prevent genocide in Gaza.
Guterres and other top UN officials must be aware of the marginal role that the international community can play in the Israeli war on Gaza because of the strong US stance in support of Israel. As long as Washington continues to serve the role of the vanguard of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, Tel Aviv has no reason to stop.
So, Palestinians do what every other occupied, colonized people did in this situation. They resist. Through their resistance, they hope to introduce a new factor to a long-skewed equation primarily controlled by Israel and its Western allies.
By releasing their prisoners as a direct result of their resistance, Palestinians are, therefore, able to influence outcomes. It means that they are political agents, in fact, political actors who can redefine the game’s rules altogether.
Indeed, Palestinians approach the issue of prisoners as part of a more extensive campaign of liberation struggle. Those who can free 100 or 7,000 detainees would, then, set a historical precedent that would, eventually, allow them to release the whole Palestinian people.
Israel is fully aware of the power and representation of the prisoners’ issue because Israel imprisons Palestinians as an expression of power and control over every aspect of Palestinian lives. Though some of the Palestinian detainees are considered, in the eyes of Israel, ‘security prisoners’, many were detained for social media posts, for WhatsApp status, or for no reason at all.
Many Palestinian women were detained for visiting the families of other prisoners or for mourning the deaths of Palestinian youths killed by Israel. Israel detained these women for the same reason that far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had outlawed the rights of Palestinians to celebrate their children’s freedom.
Specifically, Israel wants to control every aspect of Palestinian lives – their actions, real or symbolic, but even their anger, their joy and all other emotions.
When Palestinians are released through prisoner exchanges, they emerge, proudly and with heads held high, from Israeli dungeons despite the numerous obstacles, restrictions, and Israel’s insistence on keeping all Palestinian captives. For Palestinians, this is an unparalleled victory.
So, no, this is not a numbers game. Though every Palestinian individual matters, whether those being killed in Gaza or those held captive in Israeli prisons, for Palestinians, all issues are linked to one single project called liberation.
It is for this coveted collective freedom that Palestinians have fought, generation after generation, despite the high cost of death, imprisonment, and perpetual captivity.
Palestinian prisoner Khalil Zama’ (C) gestures a victory sign after being released from an Israeli jail in exchange for Israeli captives released by Resistance party Hamas from the Gaza Strip, at his home in Halhul, north al-Khalil, in the occupied West Bank on November 27, 2023 (AFP)
The Palestinian Resistance party says the deal to extend the temporary truce was agreed upon with Qatar and Egypt.
An agreement to extend the truce agreement in return for a prisoner exchange between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli occupation, which was mediated by Egypt and Qatar, has been officially reached on Monday evening, Resistance party Hamas said in a statement.
The group confirmed that a 2-day extension was agreed upon with Cairo and Doha under the same terms as the previous truce.
A spokesperson of the Qatari Foreign Ministry also announced that the agreement was reached “as part of the ongoing mediation” by Doha.
20 captives for the liberation of 60 Palestinians
Meanwhile, prior to the announcment that a deal was reached, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) said a brokered truce extension would include the release of 20 Israeli captives held by the Palestinian Resistance, in exchange for 60 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
For today’s exchange batch, with the release of 11 Israeli hostages expected on Monday, negotiations remain ongoing for the release of 33 Palestinians.
Hamas announced that it has received the list of prisoners scheduled to be released today from the prisons of the Zionist enemy, which includes 3 female prisoners, namely:
– Yassmin Tayseer Abdul Rahman Shaaban, from Jenin – Nofouz Jad Arif Hammad, from al-Quds – Itaf Youssef Muhammad Jaradat, from Jenin
The list also included the names of 30 Palestinian children, whose names will be announced later.
Earlier today, Reuters reported that Egyptian, Qatari, and US negotiators were on the verge of brokering an agreement to prolong the truce between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli entity.
The original agreement, which went into effect on Friday and was scheduled to expire by early Tuesday morning, stipulates the liberation of 150 Palestinians in exchange for the Resistance releasing 50 Israeli captives.
"My feeling is indescribable," the mother of the two freed #Palestinian prisoners, Qassam and Nasrallah A'war, tells #AlMayadeen minutes before her children returned home after being imprisoned for a year and a half in Israeli occupation prisons.#Palestinepic.twitter.com/EsEYsufmkt
On his part, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said a deal to renew the temporary ceasefire is within reach and could open the way for the international community to work on a political solution to the war.
However, as expressed by a number of world top officials and leading human rights organizations, a temporary truce is insufficient to end the suffering of the people in Gaza under the Israeli brutal war, which saw a 50-day-long blockade on basic life necessities, daily massacres, the destruction of entire residential areas, and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of now homeless civilians.
As per the latest data released by the Palestinian Health Ministry, 16,000 Palestinians were martyred in the Israeli aggression on Gaza, over half of whom are children and women, and over 32,000 were wounded.
Commenting on the current talks, the United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called for a full humanitarian ceasefire rather than a pause, as the humanitarian crisis in the Strip is deepening by each passing day.
“The dialogue that led to the agreement must continue, resulting in a full humanitarian ceasefire, for the benefit of the people of Gaza, Israel and the wider region,” Guterres’ Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The United Nations will continue to support these efforts in every possible way,” he said.
Despite the increased amount of aid entering the besieged Strip, the current rate remains far below meeting the population’s humanitarian basic needs. As per the initial agreement, 200 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza on a daily basis over the course of the truce, including fuel trucks which have been previously entirely prohibited by the occupation entity.
Dujarric added that the UN upscaled the delivery of aid into Gaza in the past 4 days, including to northern the Strip, the center of the Israeli brutal aggression.
“But this aid barely registers against the huge needs of 1.7 million displaced people. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is getting worse by the day.”
‘Hardly enough’
His conclusion echoes a statement made on Sunday by the head of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini, who described the recent quantity of aid going into Gaza as “hardly enough”.
“Since … the beginning of the truce, we have seen a significant increase of trucks entering into Gaza. I would say on the first day we had an average of 40 trucks, which was far, far, far too little compared to the immense need in the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said in an interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“And now I would say over the last few days, we had an average of 160 to 200 trucks crossing Rafah and entering into Gaza. Having said that, I do believe that the 200 are hardly enough for the humanitarian response if we want to reverse the impact of the siege in the Gaza Strip, but we need also commercial flow.”
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Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, which, in fact, began 75 years ago.
On October 20, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and besieged Gaza.
Guterres was not the only international figure to travel to the Gaza border, hoping to mobilize the international community in the face of an ongoing genocide in an already impoverished and besieged Strip.
“Behind these walls, we have two million people that is suffering (sic) enormously,” Guterres said.
These efforts, however, paid little dividends.
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement on October 24 that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “too slow (for it to) change the reality” on the ground.
This means that the seemingly endless UN Security Council debates, General Assembly resolutions and calls for action did little to alter the tragic situation in Gaza in any meaningful way.
This begs the question, what is the use of the elaborate international political, humanitarian and legal systems if they are unable to stop or even slow down a genocide that is being aired live on TV screens all across the world?
In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate action. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed, and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.
But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.
Many officials in Western institutions are becoming aware of this hypocrisy. On October 28, Craig Mokhiber resigned from his position as the Director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in protest of the UN’s failure to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”
On October 20, around 850 members of the EU staff signed a letter to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, criticizing her “unconditional support” for Israel.
The letter was polite and diplomatic, considering the horrendous moral failure of Von der Leyen, especially when her gung-ho approach to the Russian war in Ukraine is compared to her blind support of Israeli crimes in Gaza. “Only if we acknowledge Israel’s pain and its right to defend itself will we have the credibility to say that Israel should react… in line with international humanitarian law,” she said.
The International Olympic Committee, which insists on separating politics and sports, has no problem meddling in politics when the enemy is a Palestinian.
The IOC stated on November 1, warning any participant in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for 2024, from engaging in any “discriminatory behavior” against Israeli athletes because “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments.”
The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge or even the self-serving humanitarian.
This is not a difficult conclusion to reach. Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, in fact, 75 years prior.
Nothing will ever alter this fact, and no ‘strongly worded’ future statements will ever help the West redeem its collective moral failure.
Feature photo | Smoke and fire engulf Gaza City following an Israeli airstrike on the densely populated urban area. Hatem Moussa | AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
When U.S. President Joe Biden callously tried to question the number of Palestinians dead, the Gaza medical staff, who are forced to perform life-saving surgeries on the dirty grounds of hospitals, took the time to prove him wrong. On October 26, they produced a list containing the names of 6,747 Palestinian casualties who were killed in the first 19 days of war.
Thousands have been killed and wounded since then, yet Washington and its Western allies insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if this comes at the expense of a whole nation.
The Israelis are not masking their language in any way. The New York Times reported on October 30 that “in private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II … to try to defeat those countries.” A few days later, Israeli Minister Amichai openly declared that nuking Gaza was an option in his country’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.
On the day the NYT report appeared, Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.
He still used the same guarded language, as if not to offend the sensibilities of Israel and its Western allies. “Crimes allegedly committed in both places have to be looked into,” he said, referring to both Israel and Gaza.
One could excuse Khan by arguing that legal jargon must be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely undertaken when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine.
When an investigation is carried out, international judges frequently find themselves accused by the U.S. and Israel of bias or, worse, anti-Semitism. In the case of the investigation spearheaded by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone, in 2009, the man was forced to retract part of his report.
Khan knows this too well because he is currently sitting on a large and growing file of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, insisting on delaying the procedure under various excuses. The U.S. does not favorably view ICC judges who advance war crime cases against Israel. The anti-ICC sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration in 2020 are an example.
The US decision to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine means it is assuming the responsibility for the future casualties, senior Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev said.
“The US has essentially done this: a) acknowledged Kiev’s inability to achieve anything without using the most-condemned weapons, b) reiterated its readiness to kill civilians to continue military operations at any cost, c) assumed full responsibility for all future victims of these monstrous weapons,” the lawmaker, who is a deputy speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said on Telegram.
“To be honest, it is no longer of any interest what the so-called civilized community will think about this. That is, a herd of accomplices of all the past crimes of the West, who are frightened by an imminent collapse of the unipolar world,” Kosachev continued.
Senior Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky on Friday said the US decision to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine showed Washington is more concerned about stopping Russia from winning than keeping civilians out of harm’s way.
“The White House’s reasoning behind the decision to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine is the height of cynicism and simply monstrous. The war unleashed by the West against Russia will indeed go on until the last Ukrainian,” said the lawmaker, who is the chairman of the Committee on International Affairs at the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.
He also said, “Washington is more concerned about preventing Russia from winning the Ukrainian conflict than it is about the damage to civilians in Ukraine from cluster bombs and shells, which is imminent but yet only collateral for the US.”
Slutsky went on to say that the issue should be raised at the UN Security Council.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday said that the United States had decided to transfer to Ukraine cluster munitions, even as the United Nations opposes the use of them. He also said that Kiev had provided Washington with written guarantees that US cluster munitions will be used with minimal risks to civilians.
Farhan Haq, a deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, earlier said that the UN chief supports the Convention on Cluster Munitions and opposes the use of this type of weapons on the battlefield
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova posted to social media a video of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying the use of cluster munitions is a war crime.
Zakharova brought up the issue in connection with the US move to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine. The video posted to Telegram shows Psaki hitting out at cluster bombs on February 28, 2022.
“A year and a half later, Jake Sullivan, a national security advisor to US President [Joe] Biden told a news conference at the White House about plans to give Ukraine cluster munitions. Waiting for an appearance by Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre,” Zakharova said on Telegram.
Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, giving press briefing in Moscow (February 2022).
The following video, prepared by Al-Manar English Website, shows the US double standards in dealing with a critical issue like the cluster bombs.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki says that the Russian use of cluster bombs is a war crime. Then, the US national security advisor Jake Sullivan justifies the US decision to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs.
The US decided to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine out of despair, but the move won’t affect Russia’s determination to achieve the goals of its special military operation, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said on Friday.
“Cluster munitions are a desperate gesture. This measure tells the story that the US and its satellites have realized they are powerless. However, they do not want to admit their own failures and the failure of the attempts of Ukrainian forces to conduct an offensive against Russian regions. Hence this latest madness on their part,” he said.
The diplomat said he believes that by raising the stakes in the Ukrainian conflict, Washington is bringing humanity closer to a global conflict.
“The current level of American provocations is indeed off the charts, bringing humanity closer to a new world war. The United States is so obsessed with the idea of defeating Russia that it does not realize the gravity of its actions. They are only increasing the number of victims and prolonging the agony of the Kiev regime,” he went on to say.
The ambassador stated that Washington turned a blind eye to civilian casualties, paid no regard to the concerns of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and shrugged of the objections from its allies.
“The cruelty and cynicism with which Washington has approached the issue of transferring lethal weapons to Kiev is astounding. The administration completely ignored experts, human rights activists, and lawmakers that voiced the theses that the move would be inhumane. It turned a blind eye to civilian casualties. Now there is a risk that the submunitions will be blowing up innocent civilians for many years ahead because of what the US is doing,” Antonov said.
He said he believes that the funneling of Western weapons into Ukraine will not be able to affect Russia’s efforts to achieve the goals of its special military operation, “which aims to eradicate threats to the security of the Russian Federation, including Nazism that has been nurtured in Ukraine.”
Cluster munitions
Cluster bombs can contain hundreds of submunitions. When the bomb is detonated in the air, the submunitions are scattered over an area of tens of square meters. Some of them do not explode immediately and remain on the ground, posing a threat to civilians long after the conflict has ended. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was adopted in 2008, has been joined by 111 countries, and another 12 have signed but not yet ratified it.
According to the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch, the proportion of unexploded submunitions is usually significantly higher than stated.
Russian air defenses down another Ukrainian Su-27 jet in Kherson Region
Russian air defense forces shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter in the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR) and intercepted six HIMARS rockets over the past day during the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Saturday.
“Air defense capabilities shot down a Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 plane near the settlement of Novogrigorovka in the Kherson Region. During the last 24-hour period, they intercepted six rockets of the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system,” the spokesman said.
In addition, Russian air defense systems destroyed 17 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in areas near the settlements of Verkhnekamenka (Lugansk People’s Republic), Maryinka, Volodino (in the Donetsk People’s Republic), Ostrikovka, Shirokoye, Mirnoye (in Zaporozhye), Novaya Mayachka, Novaya Kakhovka, Malokakhovka, Ulyanovka (Kherson Region) and Volfino (the Suma Region).
From seven sides, neighboring nations closely monitor the spillover risk, mainly due to Sudan’s unique geostrategic significance.
By Rasha Reslan
Sudan’s neighbors are watching closely, and they don’t like what they see.
Sudan’s neighbors’ worst nightmare is playing out, as over three weeks of fighting are burning the country of 49 million people. They are watching closely, and they don’t like what they see. Scenarios open up a wide range of possibilities amid fears that the escalating clashes will likely transcend Sudan’s borders and inflame conflicts within its neighbors’ territories.
Geostrategic importance
The African country shares borders with seven nations — Egypt, South Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea– which have already had their share of warfare, sedition, or political crises in the past few years.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that a “catastrophic conflagration” of the conflict “could engulf the whole region and beyond” as expectations for a quick resolution dwindle with each breached cease-fire.
Meanwhile, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, said as quoted by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that there is a risk that the crisis in Sudan can spill over to other countries in the region.
He warned that there are very fragile countries among Sudan’s neighbors and that the repercussions of the clashes spreading would be catastrophic.
Earlier, Sudan’s ousted Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok stated that the conflict in Sudan could turn into one of the world’s worst civil wars if it is not put to a stop early on.
Hamdok explained that the ongoing conflict is a “senseless war” between two armies, given that “there is nobody who is going to come out of this victorious. That is why it has to stop.”
Sudan has sunk into chaos since the clashes erupted on April 15 between the forces of rival generals General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan (Sudanese Armed Forces) and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Rapid Support Forces – RSF), following weeks of heightened tensions over a power-sharing agreement.
More than 530 people have died in the violence, and tens of thousands of people have been scrambling to flee their homeland, as per the Sudanese Health Ministry. Some have managed to secure coveted seats on lifeboats and emergency airlifts across the Red Sea. But the majority are forced to find safety on their own.
Here’s why the fighting in Sudan sends shockwaves across the region
From seven sides, neighboring nations closely monitor the spillover risk, mainly due to Sudan’s unique geostrategic significance, its size, and its location at the confluence of the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Red Sea, and the Arab world.
“What happens in Sudan will unquestionably impact neighboring countries.”
-Ayman Al Qassem Ahmad Abed Al-Aziz
Expert in Arab Intellect Affairs
An Expert in Arab Intellect Affairs Ayman Al Qassem Ahmad Abed Al-Aziz told Al Mayadeen English that there are no natural borders separating Sudan from its neighbors, and there exists a remarkable ethnic, cultural, and linguistic overlap between the populations of western Sudan, Darfur, eastern Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
Concurrently, Chad and South Sudan immediately emerge as being at risk of a potential spillover, and as the fighting escalates, it is more likely that the conflict will spill over to other neighboring countries and beyond, he further argued.
In the north, Egypt looks to Sudan as a safety net against political unrest and as a partner in local water disputes.
Egypt and Sudan rely on the Nile River, which originates in Ethiopia. the two water-stressed countries have always considered the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam a threat to their access to water, and any disagreements between Cairo and Khartoum could imperil efforts to strike a water-sharing arrangement with Addis Ababa.
Sudanese writer Mohamamd Al Mahjoub told Al Mayadeen English that Sudan’s frontiers with Egypt have a long history of stability. However, in recent years, with the “gold rush” looming, some troubles have come to pass, starting with illegal mining, contrabands, and human trafficking, among other issues.
The main activity between the two neighboring countries is commerce, underdeveloped but continuous, he added.
“With raw materials and vegetables as the main goods crossing from the Sudanese part to the Egyptian side, on the other hand, we have: consumer goods, household, medical supplies …etc entering Sudan from the Egyptian part,” he further stressed.
On Sudan’s opposite side, thousands of predominantly South Sudanese refugees have recently started pouring across the 1,200-mile border to go back to their home country amid the infighting.
South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 but slid two years later into a civil war that left nearly 400,000 dead.
Despite the signing of a peace agreement in 2018, sporadic bursts of violence continued between the government and opposition forces, in addition to conflicts between ethnic groups in the country, which caused heavy casualties among civilians.
South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest nations, is ill-prepared to take in foreigners or returning refugees from Sudan. According to Marie-Helene Verney, the country’s representative for the UN refugee agency, there are over 12 million people living in South Sudan, 2 million of whom are internally displaced, and 75% of them depend on humanitarian help. In other countries in the region, there are about 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees.
The recent surge in the number of Sudanese and South Sudanese returning from exile runs the potential to reignite violence and struggle over the few resources in the fledgling country. In 2011, primarily African and Christian or animist South Sudan declared its independence from the Arab and Muslim-majority Sudan, putting an end to decades of civil violence. But in 2013, a new civil war in South Sudan broke out, this time spurred by unresolved ethnic conflicts and quarreling political leaders.
A crisis that will cross borders
On Sudan’s western side, the UN predicted that over 100,000 people would flee Sudan to Chad, which already hosts more than half a million refugees, with aid agencies warning that larger flows of refugees are estimated to arrive. In the past few days, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people have fled Sudan’s Darfur region to seek refuge in neighboring Chad, as per the UN.
About 400,000 Sudanese refugees from earlier conflicts were already living in border camps in Chad.
Political instability in Chad may be further enflamed by the fighting in Sudan and the resulting power void. The Janjaweed, a conglomeration of Arab tribal militant groups active in Darfur and parts of Chad, and the RSF, have a bloody history in Chad.
Under Al-Bashir’s command, the Janjaweed intimidated Sudan’s Darfur area and carried out cross-border assaults on Sudanese refugees in Chad in the 2000s. N’Djamena accused Khartoum of aiding militants in Chad.
Chad also worries about being entangled in proxy and regional battles. The Central African Republic, a former French colony southwest of Sudan, has suffered for years from sectarian conflict, mismanagement, and uprisings. According to the United Nations, armed groups and militias effectively rule the nation, where 50% of the population lacks access to enough food and clean water. Price increases have already been a result of the turmoil.
Ethiopia, which borders Sudan to the southeast, is perturbed about how the violence would impact two of its top priorities: securing water rights for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and resolving Ethiopian claims to a contentious border region where fighting has previously broken out.
Abed Al-Aziz warned that the flames in the wider Horn of Africa might add fuel to the ongoing fighting in Sudan, thus leading to a wider conflict.
Tens of thousands of Ethiopians from the Tigray region have also sought sanctuary in Sudan. Their two-year battle with the national government ended in a fragile peace agreement late last year, and it now threatens to erupt once more.
Shifts in the region’s balance of power could also disturb neighboring Eritrea’s weak alliances.
Many Eritreans escaping their government’s compulsory conscription fled to Sudan, which welcomed thousands of refugees and asylum seekers from its eastern neighbor. In Ethiopia’s recent conflict with Tigray militants, Eritrea backed Ethiopia. The two nations had just recently put an end to a protracted cold war.
For just a minute, let us put aside all the round negotiation tables, the collared delegations, their eloquent press conferences, the condemnation statements, and politicized UN resolutions.
Sudan, just like many other African countries, is already suffering from the grip of systemic poverty, and limited tangible opportunities, under the death grip of the IMF and other global hegemonic bodies.
The crisis today is not a noncontextual event, but rather the direct result of decades of direct Western intervention, colonialism, resource theft, and internal meddling.
One thing is crystal clear: Sudan’s future is intricately linked to its need to give less weight to its broader geopolitical landscape and instead focus on internal Sudanese dialogue. This will suit Sudan just fine. Other options will suit the West.
Clashes broke out after weeks of tension between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Though the two groups were once allies, tensions have been brewing since the proposed integration of the RSF into the military. As factions battle for control, where is Khartoum headed?
The United Nations belies that the situation in Sudan will see the country collapsing as violence enters its third week between the country’s warring factions.
Smoke rises in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, April 29, 2023 (AP)
Warplanes on bombing flights received intense anti-aircraft fire above Khartoum on Saturday, as the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) reached its third week, breaching a recently restored truce.
Since April 15, battles have erupted between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s forces and his number two, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (Hemedti).
While the number of dead civilians keeps rising and chaos and lawlessness engulf Khartoum, a city of five million people where many have been confined to their homes without food, water, or electricity, they have repeatedly agreed to ceasefires that have failed to yield many results.
To escape the fighting, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in Sudan or have made difficult journeys to neighboring Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
“There is no right to go on fighting for power when the country is falling apart,” UN chief Antonio Guterres the Al Arabiya television.
Al-Burhan and Dagalo have agreed to multiple fragile truces since the start of the fighting, with each side blaming the other for violating them.
The United States, Saudi Arabia, the African Union, and the United Nations mediated the agreement to the most recent three-day truce, which will end at midnight on Sunday.
Guterres voiced his support for the African-led mediation efforts. “My appeal is for everything to be done to support an African-led initiative for peace in Sudan,” he told Al Arabiya.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said it had “deployed US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support air and land evacuation routes which Americans are using.”
Britain said it was ending its evacuation flights, after airlifting more than 1,500 people this week.
The World Food Programme has warned that the clashes could plunge millions more into hunger in a country where 15 million people –one-third of the population – already need aid to stave off famine.
The unstable security situation in Sudan is slowly taking its toll on the economy: especially in regard to food products, according to a report by The Guardian.
Locals have forsaken their day-to-day jobs out of fear of getting caught in the cross-fire. The Guardian correspondent reports that Omdurman’s open-air market, which used to be an economic hub for the exchange of goods, has had half of its stalls closed.
Ever since the violence broke out, causing fuel stations to close down, fuel prices have spiked impacting by extension the prices of all other commodities.
Sudan’s armed forces agreed to extend the ceasefire, which was proposed for an additional 72 hours, to take effect from the expiry date of the current truce.
On the last day of the fourth ceasefire, clashes erupted at several points in Khartoum and plumes of smoke rose in the vicinity of the presidential palace in Khartoum, coinciding with the overflight of warplanes.
As battles intensified on the ground, the two rival generals took aim at each other in the media, with Al-Burhan identifying the RSF as a militia that aims “to destroy Sudan” in an interview for US-based TV channel Al-hurra.
He also added “mercenaries” were pouring over the border from Chad, Central African Republic, and Niger to fuel the chaos.
In response, Dagalo slammed the army chief in an interview for the BBC, saying he was “not trustworthy” and a “traitor”.
According to the UN, around 75,000 people have been internally displaced as a result of the fighting in Khartoum, the states of Blue Nile and North Kordofan, as well as the western area of Darfur.
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.”
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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
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.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 