✍️ Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s greetings to the organisers, participants and guests of the BRICS Film Festival

💬 Films represent the entire range of civilisations and societies in the association. This diversity keeps in the spirit of #BRICS: an open multilateral organisation, where equal member states are seeking effective solutions to today’s topical problems and national development together.

Your Film Festival serves as a great illustration of constructive dialogue and mutual enrichment of cultures. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this undertaking in today’s conditions. I am confident that it will succeed and become an unforgettable event in the life of Moscow, and also reimage the cultural component of Russia’s chairship in BRICS.

🤝 I wish you successful work together, great and unforgettable impressions, and all the best.

💬 Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria #Zakharova: Russia’s strategic partnership with #ASEAN is on the rise:

✅ Expert consultations on digitisation have launched;

✅ Work of joint anti-terrorism bodies is intensifying;

✅ Cultural and educational events are being held.

Levitating in Kenozero is like being between dream and reality...

Video by: instagram.com/andrewbazanov

Russia Beyond

🎙 Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s answer to a media question about US Congress approving financial aid to Ukraine

❓ What can you say about US Congress voting to allocate funds to Ukraine and other US clients?

💬 We have no interest whatsoever in the noise coming from the House of Representatives over approving aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which goes hand in hand with the tug-of-war between the White House and the Republicans who, with the upcoming presidential campaign in mind, were also pushing for funding the efforts to put an end to illegal border crossings from Mexico.

One thing is clear: regardless of their party affiliation, the US ruling elites are willing to flood the Kiev regime with weapons for it to continue to fight to the last Ukrainian and to continue, among other things, to carry out terrorist attacks targeting civilian sites in Russia, to perpetrate acts of sabotage, and to kill journalists. For this purpose, Washington is resorting to the trivial theft of frozen Russian assets, for which Congress has given the green light to the Biden administration.

Interestingly, amid these internal squabbles, the White House is no longer banking on an ephemeral victory by the Kiev regime under its control. All it wants is for the Ukrainian armed forces to hold out at least until the November voting without damaging Biden’s image. Actually, this is why the agony of Zelensky and his inner circle is being dragged out, and ordinary Ukrainians are being forcibly driven to slaughter as cannon fodder. The Republicans who are lobbying the interests of the US defence industry, which will receive the bulk of allocations to Ukraine, have a stake in this as well.

Considering this, we confirm that Washington’s actions as an active party to the conflict will be rebuffed unconditionally and decisively, and its increasingly deeper plunge into the hybrid war against Russia will end up in a fiasco for the United States as scandalous and humiliating as in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

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🎙 Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the murder of Russian military correspondent Semyon Yeryomin

On April 19, Izvestia’s military correspondent Semyon Yeryomin perished in a well-aimed drone attack in the Zaporozhye Region. The attack was launched by armed units of the Kiev regime, while he was performing his professional duty.

He died from wounds inflicted by an artillery shell dropped from a Ukrainian drone in a second deliberate attempt on his life.

❗️ We regard this premeditated and coldblooded murder as yet another confirmation exposing the ugly, terrorist nature of the Zelensky regime, which has declared open season on Russian media persons, military correspondents and public figures, whose reports, comments and publications reveal the truth to the international community and furnish undeniable evidence of crimes committed by the Kiev regime’s thugs.

It was Semyon Yeryomin who published documentary evidence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine designating Russian frontline correspondents as priority targets for annihilation.

The murder of Semyon Yeryomin, this bloody crime, cannot be seen as anything other than an act of vengeance for his honest performance of his journalistic duty.

We urge the related international organisations and human rights bodies to immediately and resolutely denounce yet another cruel murder of a Russian journalist. By their habitual silence, they are encouraging the Kiev clique to new, ever more horrible terrorist attacks against media representatives, something that makes them accomplices in these crimes.

☝️ Double standards are totally unacceptable in a situation involving the media rights and efforts to create a safe environment for media professionals.