The Russian Foreign Ministry explained something very clearly.



Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Russian and international news media, Moscow, December 26, 2024

26 December 2024 - 14:00

Question:

Talks are the top priority, no question about it. Many opinions are heard coming from the diplomatic circles, experts, and other sources. To put it in plain terms, they are trying hard to see both of us make peace. The question is, though, who are we supposed to talk to in Kiev? President-elect Trump’s presumptive special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg has come up with an initiative. What’s your take on the situation?


Sergey Lavrov:

Much has been said on this subject. President Putin has repeatedly addressed this issue, including during the Direct Line and during the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting before that, as well as other events.

Empty talk is not an option for us. Everything we have heard so far was rhetoric about the need to come up with some kind of a ceasefire. However, not much is done to hide the fact that the purpose of a ceasefire is to buy time and to flood Ukraine with weapons, to help it get back in shape, to carry out additional mobilisation, and so on.

Ceasefire is a road leading nowhere. We need binding legal agreements that will lay out the conditions for ensuring Russia’s security and the legitimate security interests of our neighbours. However, they should exist in an international legal context that would preclude chances of violating these agreements. These agreements must address Ukraine crisis’ root causes. The two main ones include, first, the violation of the commitments not to expand NATO to the east and the aggressive absorption by NATO of the geopolitical space all the way up to our borders. This is what they had in store for Ukraine. They keep talking about it to this day. The second root cause includes the Kiev regime’s absolutely racist actions following the coup. The extermination of everything Russian, including language, mass media, culture, and even the use of the Russian language in everyday life, was officially greenlighted and then codified into law. Of course, that includes outlawing the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

We are told that Russia is allegedly putting forward preliminary conditions. In fact, these are not preconditions, but demands to act in line with previous agreements. As it turns out, they lied to us when they assured us that NATO would not expand eastward. They lied to us when they emphasised their commitment to a settlement based on the UN Charter fully forgetting that this Charter stipulates more than the principle of territorial integrity and also includes the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. It took the General Assembly quite a while to consider the relationship between these principles before it resolved by consensus in its wisdom that the territorial integrity of all states whose governments abide by the principle of self-determination and, therefore, represent the entire population living within the borders of the territory in question must be respected.

How can Kiev’s Nazi regime represent the interests of the residents of Crimea, Donbass, or Novorossiya, whom it declared terrorists right after the coup and launched a military “anti-terrorist operation” against them?

China and Brazil’s initiatives on Ukraine crisis put accent on the need to abide by the UN Charter. The principle of territorial integrity is mentioned from time to time. We are talking to our Chinese and Brazilian friends, as well as other countries that work with us in promoting the well-intentioned initiative that the UN Charter has many more facets to it than just the principle of territorial integrity. The principle of self-determination of peoples is no less important. If it were not for it, there would likely be issues with decolonising African and other peoples. This principle laid the international legal groundwork for decolonisation which echoed the African peoples’ unwillingness and impossibility to live under the colonisers’ rule.

By the same token, the residents of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya are unwilling and unable to live under the Nazi rule in Kiev. So, the principle of self-determination of the peoples is coming into force. They have one the self-determination part. The residents of Crimea did so in 2014, and Donbass and Novorossiya in 2022. These realities have been included in our Constitution.

If we want to have a serious conversation, we need to treat the principles of the UN Charter not selectively, but consistently in their entirety and interrelation without, of course, forgetting the much-beloved-by-the-West principle of respect for human rights. They did not come up with it. It is laid down in the UN Charter. The very first article of the Charter states that everyone must respect human rights regardless of gender, race, language, and religion. Russian language has been legally exterminated in Ukraine. The religion - the Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church - has been banned, too. So, I believe everyone who is sincerely willing to help identify ways to settle the crisis cannot ignore its root causes.


to be continued

ruzzia wants time to build up tank/APC/IFV/artillery etc etc etc stocks.

ruzzia needs to get out of Ukraine.

Ukraine is never going to seriously invade ruzzia. The opposite is obviously not true. So it does not matter if Ukraine acquires LOTS of modern, effective weapons.

ruzzia just needs to get out of Ukraine.

chimera wrote on Dec 27^th, 2024 at 8:09pm:


In what cases can it be used in Ukraine?

For example, can it be used in education?

RussiAnVetEraN wrote on Dec 27^th, 2024 at 7:47pm:

Ukrainian is official and Russian is actively spoken. It's a lie to say it's 'exterminated.'

Australia is a www.COMmunist country anyway.
...but we do get American TV Media losers here, like Monk.