#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 The Kiev regime has decorated the Motherland Monument (iconic Soviet monument, unveiled in 1981, marking the Victory over Nazism in #WWII) in the colours of the US flag on July 4.

Apparently, this is a visualization of a concept by a local "historian" Alexander Dubina that Christopher Columbus was... Ukrainian 🤡

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 On February 28, 2022, Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki said that the use of cluster bombs would be a war crime.

Over a year later, Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to US President Joe Biden, said at a briefing that the White House would provide cluster munitions to Ukraine.

We are looking forward to what Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will say 🎪

UPD. They decided to give the floor to the boss: President Biden said that it was a “difficult decision” to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, but Ukrainians “need them.”

He forgot to add that dead Ukrainians need them especially badly.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Destructive minorities

PACE continues to favour illegitimate resolutions, this time demanding a total ban on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the Olympic Games. Obviously, they are violating:
- the Olympic Charter (the IOC Charter);
- the 2013 UNESCO Berlin Declaration;
- several UN General Assembly resolutions;
- and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At the same time, the absolute global majority continues adhering to Olympic principles. Thus, the Non-Aligned Movement (120 states and another 20 observers) adopted a Special Declaration at the initiative of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in Baku at the Ministerial Meeting of the NAM Coordinating Bureau urging all members to ensure the participation of all national teams at the Olympic Games in Paris.

IOC President Thomas Bach has already made an official statement: “The IOC warmly welcomes the support by the 120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement. We are greatly encouraged by this strong commitment to the unifying mission of the Olympic Games. Thank you to the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, for taking the initiative for this important resolution.”

If the West stands for democracy, it should accept the will of the majority based on international law.

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 During the briefing today I spoke about the absence of an appropriate response from the relevant international organisations to the Kiev regime’s crimes and its tactic of terror against Russian journalists and other media representatives.

We saw a perfect example of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis’ reaction even to feeble criticism after UNESCO Secretary-General Audrey Azoulay posted an absolutely toothless comment on the murder of Russian military reporter Rostislav Zhuravlev by the Banderites and the wounding of his colleagues in an attack launched with the use of US-supplied cluster munitions. She said that she “deplored” the death of the Russian journalist, as if it was just another obituary, whereas she was supposed to provide an appropriate assessment of a crime.

The Ukrainian delegation reacted to her comment immediately and in its traditional extremist manner. They circulated a note on behalf of the “Ukrainian media community,” which not simply justified the murder of Rostislav Zhuravlev but also included a new package (!) of open threats to our correspondents and media outlets. It said that Russian media organisations and their personnel must receive the punishment they deserve for their actions.

❗️ Responsibility for the birth of that satanic monster called the Kiev regime lies with those who have disregarded its crimes over the years, even though it is their primary duty to call such culprits to account. Crafty non-committal replies won’t be accepted any more. You are responsible, through your action or inaction, for creating a terrorist monster.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 The Kiev regime is a neo-Nazi malignant growth on the body of Eastern Europe. It gives the Hitler salute, stages torchlight processions, harasses the Jewish population and, of course, espouses total Russophobia.

But now new documents have come to light concerning yet another oppressed group of people, Muslim Tatars.

Journalists from the Turkish Aydinlik newspaper received access to the correspondence of Deputy Chief of the 3rd Sector of the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) State Security Department for the Kherson Region Lt-Col D. Dosenko, including classified documents.

In them SBU employees report to their superiors that the Tatar (Crimean Tatar) population of Ukraine “continues to pose a threat to the territorial integrity and the constitutional system of the country”. We don’t know when this report was submitted but most likely it was in 2020-2021, according to experts.

The document is full of derogatory language about Ukraine’s Tatar population (I will recall that this is an official SBU report). This is from the background file on activist Gulnara Bekirova, a candidate of Zelensky’s party Servant of the People – “Holds nationalist views”.

The document also raised other issues, for instance, financial ones: “The financing of Lenur Islyamov’s initiatives and projects will be substantially reduced because he failed to fulfil his commitments and did PR events instead of real work”. More broadly, this shows once again the extent of the theft in Ukraine in all areas – from allocations for arms supplies to funds for national policy. It’s corruption from top to bottom.

While in Russian Crimea and the new territories, all ethnic groups live in peace and are able to move forward, speak their language and maintain their identity, neo-Nazi militants from Kiev continue their attempts to build a mono-ethnic state. They do not care who is crushed under the wheels of repression, be it Russians, Trans-Carpathian Hungarians, Jews, Roma or Tatars.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 The Foreign Ministry has released a statement regarding the food deal and the supply of grain and fertiliser.

Let's, for the umpteenth time, use facts and figures to take a look at the situation concerning food security after the Black Sea Initiative was discontinued.

1. The grain deal did not help the poorest countries address hunger. Out of 32.8 million tonnes of food, just a trifle - less than 3 percent - were sent to the countries in need.
2. After the deal came to an end, grain prices continued to fall. In August, they fell by 4-5 percent.
3. The grain exported as part of the deal mainly went toward enriching Ukrainian animal feed producers. It was primarily intended for livestock and was shipped to Europe rather than Africa.
4. Ukraine is no longer the world's breadbasket. The country's share of global grain exports is only 5 percent and continues to shrink.
5. Ukraine's arable land is shrinking as well, partly due to contamination with radiation and toxins from depleted uranium munitions that Kiev has been using since the spring.
6. Europe is not helping Ukraine export grain. Since May, there has been a ban on grain shipments to EU countries bordering on Ukraine. This situation is likely to continue into the winter.

Now, let's discuss the UN Secretariat and the West being unwilling to act on their obligations to Russia under the deal.
1. To make the deal work, it is necessary to reconnect Rosselkhozbank to SWIFT. Instead, what we are witnessing are endless discussions about creating intermediary mechanisms through subsidiary enterprises and partner banks (without implementation guarantees). Rosselkhozbank accounts are being closed altogether.
2. There has been no progress on insuring Russian ships. We’ve seen nothing but promises to take care of things “later.” A special insurance platform mechanism has not been created.
3. The unlocking of assets is only to be discussed after the humiliating process of companies acknowledging their “sanctioned status.” Again, without any guarantees.
4. The UN remains silent with regard to resuming the Toglatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline’s operation, which could provide fertiliser to tens of millions of customers.
5. We invited the UN to join in a discussion, but Rebeca Grynspan who is in charge of the deal on behalf of the UN, is unwilling to come to Moscow or even send reports about her activities.


Finally, let's talk about how Russia is actually addressing the issue of hunger in the world, without any “deals.”
1. Russia has already sent or will soon send:
• 20,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Malawi;
• 34,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Kenya;
• 23,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Zimbabwe;
• 34,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Nigeria;
• 55,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Sri Lanka;
• 200,000 tonnes of wheat to Somalia, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, and Eritrea.
2. A project is being developed jointly with Ankara and Doha to deliver 1 million tonnes of grain (!) to Türkiye where it will be processed and shipped free of charge (!) to the poorest countries.

It turns out that while Europe was exporting animal feed grain from Ukraine across the Black Sea as part of the deal, efforts were made to block and to create loss-making circumstances for Russian agriculture. The UN failed to resolve the situation.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova:

According to the media, the White House claims that depleted uranium munitions to be sent to Kiev do not present a radioactive threat.

Is this a lie or ineptitude?

I wrote many times about the toxicity of depleted uranium, the special danger of radioactive dust for human health and soil contamination with radionuclides, I would like to remind everyone that the number of cancer cases spiked in the areas where depleted uranium munitions have been used. NATO military personnel can testify to that, especially Italian servicemen, who did not know about this during the bloc’s aggression against Yugoslavia. Years later, the Italian parliament published a 252-page report citing the results of such research.

Out of the 7,500 people subjected to the effects of toxic agents and radiation, 372 have died (that is a 5 percent mortality rate, or every 20th person). Moreover, they died of painful cancer complications such as renal dysfunction, lung cancer, bone cancer, oesophagus cancer, degenerative skin disorder, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and leukaemia.

Serbs, the direct victims of NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, were also affected by depleted uranium munitions. According to the Serbian Health Ministry, the rate of various diseases increased considerably in the regions bombed by NATO, including cancer, male infertility, a broad range of autoimmune diseases, pathological pregnancies, and children’s mental disorders.

#Opinion

✍️ Article by Mikhail Rostovsky, MK media-group columnist under the Editor-In-Chief

Putin in the Labyrinth: how Moscow can avoid losing in the Middle East

🔹 Each new Middle East crisis is one of a kind, similar to the previous ones - both in the sense of its impact on the region itself and on outside world.

🔹 It is in Moscow's best interest to pursue a balanced line in the Middle East because any tilt in one direction or another will seriously jeopardize its national interests.

🔹 Big politics in the Middle East has consisted, and continues to consist, of such nuances hidden from prying eyes, secret layers. Ignoring this fact in an attempt to pursue a policy in the region based on binary logic, where there are those who are for us and those who are against us, dooms even a great power to the role of an object that is manipulated by everyone.

🔹 When choosing between the conflicting sides in the Middle East, Moscow must invariably choose itself, no matter how this might hurt the feelings of its partners in the region and beyond.

🔹 The view that what happened on October 7 was a colossal failure by Israel’s intelligence services is just a banality now. Lying behind this failure is an even bigger catastrophe - a failure of political strategy, erroneous long-term calculations by the top Israeli leadership.

🔹 Israel has no idea how to strategically solve the problem of the Gaza Strip. The military action it has taken is just a strategic improvisation.

🔹 Based on its status as an influential global and regional player, Russia must contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, and at the same time prevent itself from becoming another "Middle East."

Read in full

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 UK Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps wrote on his X account: “The world has turned its back on Russia, forcing Putin into the humiliation of going cap in hand to North Korea to keep his illegal invasion going. In doing so Russia has broken multiple UNSC resolutions and put the security of another world region at risk. This must stop now. Together with our partners we’ll make sure North Korea pays a high price for supporting Russia.”

1. Is Grant Shapps about to tweet how many UNSC resolutions the UK has breached in the past 50 years? With its invasion of Iraq, for example.

2. What about the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)? Have the ministries in London worked it out? Also, I believe they should shed light on what happened to HMS Sheffield, which sank near the Falklands in 1982. Specifically, whether there were nuclear weapons on board. Let me remind you that in the photos of the Sheffield crew that survived the sinking, the crew members were, oddly enough, wearing radiation protection gear. At the time, Shapps’s predecessors at the Ministry of Defence denied the fact that the warships bound for the islands carried nuclear weapons. But 20 years later, similar to the situation with Iraq, London acknowledged its small lie. A very small one. Britain could no longer deny it and confirmed that the ships had indeed been carrying nuclear weapons in 1982. The official spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence stated that “the weapons were Type WE.177 nuclear depth charges;” they “never entered the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands.” “A decision was taken to transfer them to other ships heading back home.” This should be verified, don’t you think?

3. I understand that poor English education has become a signature mark of the British government. Shapps could perform a simple calculation and subtract the number of NATO countries from the countries representing the Global Majority. Unfortunately, it seems like he struggles with counting.

4. Britain was the largest colonial empire in human history, with its domain spanning across all populated continents. You can learn more about this in our history section and the white book reports about the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons and their allies.

And since Shapps’s jab was specifically about North Korea, I must mention the bloody war on the Korean Peninsula that Great Britain contributed to as part of the so-called UN forces.

Here is just a brief list of London’s modern-time neo-colonial campaigns: British ground and air forces participated, alongside the Americans, in the aggression against Yugoslavia and the destruction of Iraq (see par. 1) and its population, as well as Libya, Afghanistan, the bombing of Syria and most recently – the support for the Kiev regime provided by the Anglo-Saxons in violation of all resolutions on non-supplying lethal weapons to conflict zones.

There is one thing that Shapps got right: “This must stop now.”

https://t.iss.one/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/6856

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 The Telegraph, UK, published a heart-rending story that could well qualify for a Russophobia-of-the-Month prize. It’s about how the Russian Embassy in London had nearly upset the coronation of Charles III in May 2023.

It turns out that an unidentified drone was hovering over the Buckingham Palace during the solemn ceremony. The police, of course, as per modern British tradition to blame the Russians, immediately suspected… the Russian Embassy.

After some time it emerged that the drone had been launched by a certain Walid Marai, 36, a US citizen.

It is not reported whether he was a CIA spy or just wanted to take a photo of Charles III from an unusual angle. What a disappointment! To my mind, this detail would have been of interest for the UK public.

If the #RussiansDidIt version regarding the bogus Russian Embassy involvement had prevailed, Russian diplomats, as usual, would have been expelled. As it is, Walid Marai got off with a £5,000 fine.

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 It is reported that about 10 killer whales (some say 12, 13 or 16), including at least one baby, have been trapped in drift ice off the coast of Hokkaido. According to Japanese media, the local authorities say they cannot be rescued.

Meanwhile, experts are confident that it is possible to save them, and it is not even necessary to use a full-fledged icebreaker. A ship of the lowest ice class would be enough to protect them from the wind and create an open area of water. Japan has, or at least had, such ships.

Where are all these environmentalists from the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and other wonder organisations? Why aren’t they sounding the alarm?

#Opinion by Ambassador Gennady Gatilov

▪️ We took note of the comments made by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and his Office regarding the recent tragedy at the Okhmatdet Hospital for Children in Kiev.

▪️ Once again, we witness the "lightning-fast reaction" of the main UN human rights advocate when it concerns events in Ukraine and an opportunity to baselessly accuse our country. This always happens instantaneously, without waiting for even a preliminary investigation of the incident. However, when it comes to civilian casualties in Sevastopol, Belgorod and other Russian cities, as well as in the much-suffering Gaza, Mr. Türk and his Office prefer to remain silent or respond with meaningless “formal replies”.

▪️ If the High Commissioner is so eager to discuss the topic of fulfilling international obligations, Mr. Türk could thoroughly explain to the Kiev regime, to which he is so attentive, the inadmissibility of using civilian populations and infrastructure as "human shields". Furthermore, he should more frequently remind Kiev of the inadmissibility of placing military objects in densely populated areas. This also applies to Ukrainian air defense systems, the negligent and unprofessional work of which has repeatedly led to tragic consequences for civilians, and this time, to a large number of victims at Okhmatdet.

▪️ It is, of course, doubtful that the criminal Zelenskiy regime, which has deprived Ukrainians of virtually all rights and freedoms, is capable of listening to common sense.