Statement by the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, A.K.Lukashevich, at a Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, 19 May 2022, On the continuing crimes of Ukraine against the civilian population with the support of Western alliance of OSCE participating States
Mr. Chairperson,
On May 16, members of the Ukrainian nationalist formation Azov and servicemen of the AFU began the process of withdrawal from the territory of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, Donetsk People’s Republic. Hundreds of them have already ceased their resistance, unconditionally laid down their weapons and left the territory of Azovstal through a special corridor formed for them. They are currently on DNR territory under the control of law enforcement authorities and will no longer carry out the criminal orders of the Kyiv regime. In total, since May 16, the number of those who have laid down their arms has reached 1,730. The process of withdrawal of those who have ceased pointless armed resistance continues. There is no active combat in the area of Azovstal.
The Permanent Representative of Ukraine told us today that it appears that a certain process of “evacuation” of the remnants of the Mariupol garrison has been initiated on the orders of President Zelensky and under the control of the SBU and, apparently, some other Ukrainian services. Well, if according to the Ukrainian representative, the process of unconditional surrender of Azov servicemen and AFU servicemen and their subsequent transportation to the DNR territory is an evacuation, then it would be nice if all remnants of the Ukrainian armed formations were “evacuated” in the same way.
Recall how, in 2018-2019, the U.S. Department of State The U.S. State Department classified Azov among other extremist groups, such as S14, as “hate groups.” But now the situation has apparently changed – they are now called “freedom fighters. This is nothing new to us: in American political practice, this is commonplace. I remember that in Syria, if Islamic fundamentalists shot at the American military, they were called terrorists, and if they killed members of the Syrian government army, they immediately became “freedom fighters”. It’s the same rhetoric here now.
It seems that the Ukrainian leadership was quite satisfied with such developments: the very next day after the surrender process began, on May 17, President Zelensky spoke at the opening ceremony of the glamorous Cannes Film Festival. Competently talking about the problems of modern cinema, he mentioned Mariupol and Azovstal only in passing.
The true defenders of Mariupol are those who liberated the city from neo-Nazis and ensured that the self-proclaimed “superhumans” would no longer be able to terrorize the local population or foment ethnic discord. Undoubtedly, the cessation of armed attacks by Ukrainian neo-Nazis is having a positive effect on the process of establishing peaceful life in Mariupol. Peace is returning to the city, which had been held hostage by Azov fighters for eight years. Authorities in the DNR are ensuring the resumption of water and electricity supplies to homes, utilities are eliminating the consequences of the city’s fighting, and public transportation has resumed operations.
Russian and DNR law enforcement agencies are accumulating more and more eyewitness accounts of criminal actions in Mariupol – targeted shooting of residential areas by Ukrainian militants, use of population as “human shields”, violence against civilians, equipment of military bases in schools, hospitals and social institutions, deliberate arson of apartment buildings to create a “smoke screen” during abandonment of combat positions by Azov and AFU units. It goes without saying that all these facts and evidence will be given a proper legal assessment.
Kyiv continues to demonstrate an inhumane attitude to the fate of civilians and disregard for the norms of morality and international humanitarian law. Over the past week, the Ukrainian armed forces carried out a series of strikes on residential areas and civilian infrastructure in the DNR and LNR, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 55. In total, from February 17 to May 17, at least 147 people were confirmed killed and more than 580 civilians of the People’s Republics were wounded as a result of the actions of Ukrainian armed formations in the territories of the DNR and LNR. Many of the victims were children. The figures on the dead and wounded are being updated, and their number is unfortunately steadily increasing as the reports are verified and confirmed.
We are forced to note that the OSCE has not yet been able to have a substantive conversation about the confirmed facts about what is happening in Ukraine. There is a great deal of emotion in this room, which is not supported by real data. Representatives of a number of countries have made a habit of relaying the propaganda of the Kyiv regime without bothering to verify the facts or deliberately contributing to the spread of disinformation. Take the story about the “rape of an 11-year-old boy in front of his own mother,” told here the very next day after the Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights (Children’s Ombudsman) Darya Gerasymchuk publicly admitted that the authorities still have “not a single confirmed fact” about military violence against children.
We understand that the ideological veil of so-called “Euro-Atlantic discipline” has obscured the view of many. After all, in addition to the cheap denigration of Russian servicemen and the Donbas republics, some participants in the discussion stubbornly pretend that the Ukrainian armed forces do not, in principle, commit crimes against civilians. As in the previous eight years, the Ukrainian armed forces’ use of cluster munitions on civilian towns and indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and civilian infrastructure, near which there are no military positions, is being completely ignored. Ukrainian fighters are presented as almost “angels,” but none of those who whitewash them remember the real angels, such as the Angel Alley memorial complex in the center of Donetsk. It was erected in memory of dozens of innocent children who died as a result of brutal Ukrainian shelling.
Ukrainian armed formations continue to fight civilians. On May 16, Smerch multiple-launch rocket launchers struck residential neighborhoods in Kherson. It is important to note that the shelling was deliberately directed at civilians, as there are no Russian troop units in that city. All ten rockets were intercepted by Russian air defenses on their approach to the city. Which of Kyiv’s external handlers condemned this barbaric shelling? None.
On May 18, militants of the Ukrainian “territorial defense” published photos of six civilians from the temporarily occupied Severodonetsk (LNR) by the AFU, who were brutally murdered in Kiev on suspicion of placing certain “beacons. The pictures depict mutilated bodies and faces from various angles, all accompanied by mocking comments and even a video confession by one of the Ukrainian fighters, who directly threatened other civilians with extrajudicial reprisals. It is reported that all of the victims were formerly members of an opposition political party. Is this how the Kiev regime and its henchmen are “defending” the notorious “European values”?
Western representatives are now silent about all this. Not a single word on the subject has been spoken today. On the contrary, they are “copying” their emotional speeches based on empty slogans. What this actually is can be characterized as the whitewashing of crimes by Ukrainian armed formations against the civilian population of Donbas and Ukraine. It is regrettable for us to observe how diplomats from a number of Western OSCE participating States are involved in this, effectively giving the green light to continue committing violence with impunity. What is this – connivance or complicity?
As for the intentional killing of residents of Ukraine, the DNR and LNR and Russian citizens, there is every reason to believe that many of them were committed with the help of lethal weapons supplied by Western countries to the Kiev regime. At the same time, NATO’s “progenitor countries” are trying to publicly distance themselves from admitting that it is from the use of weapons and shells supplied by them that people continue to die in Ukraine. This is not welcome. However, such dichotomy and hypocrisy have long been the “calling card” of many in the West.
There is one question for those who deliver supplies: do you have absolute confidence that the weapons sent to Kiev will not end up in the hands of swastika-tattooed thugs from the National Security Forces who chant neo-Nazi and racist ideas? Or will they not “migrate” to terrorist groups in the pan-European space? Furthermore, does Germany, for example, have an absolute understanding that the military products it supplies to Ukraine will not fall into the hands of armed followers of Hitler and murderers of the SS?
When retreating from their positions, the AFU mines Donbass territories with anti-personnel mines, including those prohibited by international agreements. In particular, we are talking about pressure-type land mines PMN-2. In addition, caches of mines such as MON-50 and MON-90 abandoned by Ukrainian nationalists during retreat were found in Mariupol. The Kyiv regime has regularly, year after year, lied to the international community and the OSCE that it is allegedly fulfilling its obligations under the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines (Ottawa Convention) in good faith, that it has destroyed their stockpiles and so on. Is there anyone today who seriously believes the Ukrainian leadership’s claims that foreign weapons will not be used against civilians?
How can we explain the April 27 attack on the peaceful city of Energodar and the nearby Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) using two Polish-made “Warmate” drones armed with high-explosive munitions? Let me remind you that both vehicles were launched from AFU-controlled territory and were shot down over Energodar without reaching their targets. Committing such provocations using foreign weapons undermines the safety of nuclear facilities and can endanger the lives and health of both the Ukrainian population and citizens of European countries. After verifying and confirming the facts, last week the Russian Federation sent evidence of the attack on the peaceful critical infrastructure to the IAEA secretariat with a request to make this information available to the Agency’s member States.
Representatives of the regime in Kyiv do not shy away from provocations with chemical substances. On May 16, near Mazanivka village in the temporarily occupied territory of the DNR, the Ukrainian special services detonated a land mine, which was reinforced with up to one ton of ammonium nitrate. The explosion created a poisonous cloud about one kilometer high, which moved toward Kramatorsk.
The explosion by the Ukrainian military of chemical tanks in Rubezhnoye on April 5 and 9, including at the local Zarya plant, already mentioned by us, is also in the same vein. Rubizhne has now been liberated. The other day the details of the seven U.S. citizens killed there, who had participated in the fighting on the side of the Ukrainian nationalists, were made public. According to the testimony of Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered to the law enforcement authorities, American and Polish mercenaries who were in Rubezhnoye commanded the Ukrainian soldiers, deliberately turned the territory of the said factory into a military facility, and “managed” there without sparing human life.
The Kiev regime has consistently rejected the possibility of a political and diplomatic settlement. Contacts have de facto been terminated at the initiative of the Ukrainian side. As far as we understand, this was done under pressure from foreign handlers, who make no secret of their desire that “the situation be resolved on the battlefield” (J. Borrell) and that Russia be “strategically defeated in Ukraine” (E. Blinken, W. Nuland and others). Our country has data that Ukrainian negotiators are “led” by London and Washington. Under these conditions, unfortunately, we cannot count on genuinely independent decisions by the essentially puppet regime in Kyiv, for the maintenance of whose State apparatus alone the United States is planning to allocate in the near future around 7.5 billion dollars.
We understand that both the deadlock in political consultations and the military “pumping” of Ukraine are being done with the aim of prolonging the crisis in that country and preventing its inhabitants from returning to a peaceful life for as long as possible. We emphasize: Foreign military supplies to Ukraine are legitimate targets within the Russian SSR and will be destroyed. We recommend monitoring regular reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense on high-precision strikes on their storage and accumulation sites.
All of the above once again confirms that Ukraine is only expendable material in the West’s all-out hybrid war against Russia. Ukraine has been deliberately turned for years into a breeding ground for Russophobia and a source of military and biological threats to its inhabitants, as well as to the population of neighboring states. The priority asset is territory and resources, while the lives of Ukrainians themselves are of interest to the external handlers of the Kiev regime, apparently only in the context of how else they could be used against Russia. The leadership in Kiev was consistently aimed at military confrontation, while supporting the development of friendly and good-neighborly relations with its neighbors was not part of the plans of its external curators.
Two more words concerning the statements made by the participants in today’s discussion about Russia’s alleged responsibility for the global food crisis. It is clear that a new propaganda paradigm is already being elaborated in which Russia is held responsible for rising prices and a looming deficit on global food markets. But let’s take our eyes off the propaganda and look at reality. Before Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine (February 24, 2022), for example, wheat prices had been rising steadily for two years. In 2021, wheat prices went up 25%. By this February the price quotes were already 62% higher than the five-year average from 2017 to 2022. Corn was up 162% in price by February and rapeseed was up 175%.
What’s causing this? As part of the anti-crisis measures, the U.S., Japan and EU countries “pumped” more than eight trillion dollars into the anti-crisis measures, thereby accelerating inflation. Freight costs have risen substantially for the same reason. “The cherry on the cake is the anti-Russian sanctions, which, despite Western countries’ understanding of Russia’s role in the global food supply chain, were still imposed. This dealt a heavy blow to the logistics of supply and, ultimately, to prices and volumes of food coming to markets. So do not blame our country.
Those who are now dreaming of turning Ukraine into yet another “black hole” in Europe would do well to worry about the development problems of their own countries and stop investing in tensions away from their borders. Let us remind them of the good Russian proverb: “Don’t dig a hole for someone else – you will fall into it. Once again, let us emphasize that regardless of the changing conjuncture, the goals of Russia’s special military operation – the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine – will be fully achieved.
Thank you for your attention.
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