Maxim Buyakevich on the increasing military involvement of certain NATO and EU member States in further confrontation in and around Ukraine, 13 June 2024

STATEMENT BY MR. MAXIM BUYAKEVICH,

DEPUTY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION,

AT THE 1478th MEETING OF THE OSCE PERMANENT COUNCIL

13 June 2024

On the increasing military involvement

of certain NATO and EU member States

in further confrontation in and around Ukraine

Madam Chairperson,

This week has been full of attempts by the masters and sponsors of the Kyiv regime to do everything possible in the international arena to establish an anti-Russian front in the name of the Ukrainian conflict, to give legitimacy to the NATO puppets in Kyiv, to secure financial instruments for the supply of weapons and the continuation of hostilities, and to justify the theft of Russian sovereign assets.

These actions by the Western alliance led by the Governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom are combined with the fostering of the narrative of an alleged commitment to achieving a lasting and just peace in and around Ukraine. And with stories about how they are supposedly committed to ending the suffering of the civilian population. The truth is that no one has ever explained where the “zeal” of the Western governments was when the Kyiv regime started the armed conflict in Donbas in 2014, when for many years it imposed water, energy, medicine, food and other types of blockades to disrupt the everyday lives of civilians in various regions, and when it intensified the shelling of peaceful cities, including with the use of NATO weapons, which has resulted in thousands of deaths. By painting the Kyiv regime as an “innocent angel”, covering up its crimes and providing it with the means to commit new atrocities, while at the same time talking about universal principles and the rule of law, Western countries are demonstrating blatant double standards and hypocrisy. This is accompanied by regular statements from their representatives that the true path to peace “is through the battlefield”.

The Kyiv regime’s handlers still hope that they can involve the countries of the “global majority” at the conference in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, in the work of presenting Russia with some kind of ultimatum and of passing off the results of this “get-together” as some kind of “international consensus”. In reality, the puppeteers controlling the Kyiv regime have inflated expectations and are seriously deluded as to the widespread support of the international community for their initiatives. For the countries that have refused to engage with their ideas, it is clear that, using the guise of the Ukraine issue, the West is desperately striving to promote the concept of a “rules-based world order” that has never been approved by the international community and that has been devised by a Western minority that wants to impose its will on the world majority.

The attempts to replace the practical work of authoritative specialized international organizations dealing, in particular, with nuclear and food security issues and various humanitarian considerations with the ideas of a group of countries are also blatantly obvious. In short, they are doing everything possible to ensure that the Ukrainian conflict continues. In fact, given that the proposed solutions do not take into account the realities, positions and interests of the key players, these efforts have nothing to do with a settlement. Their real goal is different – to escalate the confrontation.

The fact that the actions of Western elites to inflame the Ukrainian conflict are divorced from the real needs of the people, meet with less and less support even in their own countries and do not bring real peace closer is also demonstrated by the recent domestic political dynamics in the European countries themselves.

The goals actually being pursued in the Ukrainian conflict by the anti-Russian circles in the West have long been clear. The arguments, for example, by representatives of the United States and its satellites about the supposedly “imperialist and neocolonial” nature of Russia’s policy towards Ukraine are extraordinary. In that regard, we are compelled to recall a simple but good and apt Russian proverb: “The thief has a burning hat”, in other words guilty persons reveal themselves by their actions. In an interview with Time magazine on 4 June, US President Joe Biden stated bluntly that the defeat of the Kyiv regime does not suit Washington, as it increases the chances that just about all Eastern European States will pursue independent policies. Here is the quote in its entirety: “If we ever let Ukraine go down, mark my words: you’ll see Poland go, and you’ll see all those nations along the actual border of Russia, from the Balkans and Belarus, all those, they’re going to make their own accommodations.”

This is what it is really about. It is about attempts to hang on to the fading hegemony of the United States and other “Anglo-Saxons”.

By the way, we would recommend distinguishing between “Ukraine” and “the Kyiv regime”. They are far from identical. We should also add that we do not question the ability of our closest ally, Belarus, to pursue an independent policy. Its leadership is acting in line with the interests of the State. Nor do we see anything wrong with the EU States bordering Russia mentioned by Mr. Biden looking after their national interests rather than promoting US foreign policy priorities.

In the same interview with Time, the President of the United States – a nation thousands of kilometres from the shores of the European continent – says that he intends to “determine the future of Europe for a long time to come”. This is most telling. What will be left for the Europeans themselves? And what is all this, if not the logic of neocolonialism?

On 4 June, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) passed the Use of English in Ukraine Act introduced in June 2023 by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The ringleader of the Kyiv regime is due to sign it any day now. This law is an attempt to consolidate the de facto status of the remnants of Ukraine, whose sovereignty has been stripped by the West, as a territory on which the “Anglo-Saxons” now seek to run the show.

The document stipulates that proficiency in English will be mandatory for officials at all levels, senior staff of law enforcement agencies, officers of the military and security services, heads of State enterprises, scientific centres, and so on. The plan is to impose English for preschool education from September 2026 and intensify its teaching in schools and universities. The legal force of such decisions, especially given the highly questionable legitimacy of Mr. Zelenskyy’s authority, naturally raises and will continue to raise many questions.

Moreover, this is happening at a time when, in violation of key provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution, the population of the territories under the control of the Kyiv regime have been legally deprived for more than a decade, since the very first day of the “Maidan” coup d’état on 22 February 2014, of the possibility of using the Russian language, which is native to millions of people, in social life, education, public services, and legal and judicial protection. The relevant OSCE structures have remained shamefully silent in that regard.

Against this background, representatives of the United States and its satellites, including those in this room, continue to voice false claims about our country’s supposed desire to rewrite or completely destroy the identity of the inhabitants of Ukraine. We must emphasize that it is not Russia but Western countries and their Kyiv puppets that are trampling upon the identity of millions of Ukrainian citizens, denying them the right to an ethnic Russian identity, conducting social engineering experiments, and seeking to destroy their historical memory and roots.

The US Government is preparing to send the Kyiv regime another arms package worth 225 million dollars. According to official reports, the United States has lifted any restrictions on arms transfers to neo-Nazis from the “Azov” 12th Brigade of the National Guard. Let me remind you, back in 2018, the United States banned the supply of weapons to the “Azovites” because of the racist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist views of many of them. Now, everything is possible for them. This unit is responsible for countless crimes against Russian-speaking residents of Mariupol and other towns and cities of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Many of the “Azovites” who surrendered to law enforcement authorities have been sentenced by Russian courts to long prison sentences for the mass extrajudicial executions of civilians and have started serving them. Last week, a court in the Donetsk People’s Republic pronounced a sentence of life imprisonment on Petro Shuflin, commander of an Azov unit, who shot dead a group of civilian residents of Mariupol on 14 March 2022.

Incidentally, it was “Azovites” who in February and March 2022 forcibly took possession of armoured vehicles from the Mariupol office of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and started using them in street fighting near Kirov market in Mariupol and elsewhere. Now, these neo-Nazis are openly receiving US weapons to continue committing atrocities against civilians.

In total, indiscriminate and targeted attacks by Kyiv regime formations on civilian objects on Russian territory last week resulted in at least 179 civilian casualties. Of these, 37 people were killed, including three children, and 142 were injured, including six minors. Among the most high-profile crimes were the shelling of a residential area of Novozlatopol, Zaporozhye region, with cluster munitions on 4 June (11 people were injured and a five-year-old child died in intensive care); a strike on 7 June with US-made ATACMS systems on the city of Lugansk (six dead and 60 injured, including three children); and a targeted attack on a grocery in the village of Sadovoye, Kherson region, crowded with shoppers (22 civilians killed and 15 injured).

All of this should be remembered every time the Kyiv regime’s Western handlers continue to lie about their desire to reduce the number of casualties and promote peace and a sustainable settlement. Today they have not even mentioned these incidents, as if the people who died and suffered at the hands of the armed formations of the Kyiv regime did not exist at all.

To conclude, the true “peace formula” for Ukraine calls for a complete cessation of arms supplies by NATO countries to the Kyiv regime and a halt to the recruitment of Ukrainian and foreign citizens on their territories into the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi outfits. It is important to ensure the withdrawal of all foreign mercenaries, instructors and operators of NATO weapons from the territory of Ukraine, to put an end to other activities aimed at maintaining and developing the criminal armed formations’ combat potential, and also to pave the way for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.

Thank you for your attention.