Full text of Lavrov's speech at the UN Security Council, covering the history of Washington's proxy war against Russia, as well as UN corruption and the organization's failures to uphold its own laws and values.
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Mister Chairman.
Mister Secretary General.
Colleagues.
The existing international order was built on the ruins and colossal tragedy of World War Two.
Its basis was the UN Charter, the key source of modern international law.
Largely thanks to the UN, it was possible to prevent a new world war fraught with nuclear disaster.
Unfortunately, after the end of the Cold War, the collective West, led by the United States, independently assumed the rank of arbiter of the destinies of all mankind and, overwhelmed by a complex of exclusivity, it began to increasingly ignore the legacy of the founding fathers of the UN.
Today, the West turns to statutory norms and principles selectively, from case to case, solely in accordance with its selfish geopolitical needs.
This inevitably leads to the weakening of global stability, to the aggravation of existing ones and to the ignition of new sources of tension.
The risks of global conflict are also growing.
It is precisely in order to stop them, to direct events in a peaceful direction, that Russia insisted and insists that all provisions of the UN Charter be respected and applied not selectively, but in their entirety and interrelation, including the principles of sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, respect for territorial integrity and the right of peoples to self-determination.
The actions of the United States and its allies indicate a systematic violation of the balance of requirements enshrined in the UN Charter.
Since the collapse of the USSR and the formation of independent states in its place, the United States and its allies have rudely and openly interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine.
As US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland publicly and even proudly admitted at the end of 2013, Washington spent 5 billion dollars on cultivating politicians obedient to the West in Kyiv.
All the facts of the engineering of the Ukrainian crisis have long been known, but they are trying to hide them in every possible way in order to cancel the entire history before 2014.
Therefore, the topic of today’s meeting, proposed by the Albanian Chairmanship, could not have come at a better time, and it allows us to restore the chronological chain of events and precisely in the context of the attitude of the main actors to the implementation of the principles and goals of the UN Charter.
In 2004-2005, in order to bring a pro-American candidate to power, the West sanctioned the first coup d'etat in Kiev, forcing the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to make an illegal decision to hold a third round of presidential elections not provided for by the Constitution of this country.
Even more unceremonious interference in internal affairs was evident during the second Maidan in 2013-2014.
Then a whole series of Western travelers directly encouraged participants in anti-government demonstrations to take violent actions.
The same Victoria Nuland discussed with the US Ambassador in Kyiv the composition of the future government that the putschists will form.
At the same time, she pointed out to the European Union its real place in world politics from Washington’s point of view.
We all remember her obscene two-word phrase.
It is significant that the European Union swallowed this.
In February 2014, characters selected by the Americans became key participants in the bloody seizure of power, organized, let me remind you, a day after an agreement was reached under the guarantees of Germany, Poland and France between the legally elected President of Ukraine and opposition leaders.
The principle of non-interference in internal affairs has been trampled on many times.
Immediately after the coup, the putschists declared that their absolute priority was to curtail the rights of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.
And the residents of Crimea and the southeast of this country, who refused to come to terms with the results of the unconstitutional seizure of power, were declared terrorists, and a punitive operation was launched against them.
In response to this, Crimea and Donbass held referendums in full compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, enshrined in paragraph 2 of Article 1 of the UN Charter.
Western diplomats and politicians, in relation to Ukraine, turn a blind eye to this most important norm of international law in an effort to reduce the entire background and essence of what is happening to the inadmissibility of violating territorial integrity.
In this regard, I would like to recall that the 1970 UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, adopted unanimously, states, "that the principle of respect for territorial integrity applies to States that respect in its actions the principle of equality and self-determination of peoples, and, as a result, having governments that represent all the people living in a given territory."
The fact that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis who seized power in Kyiv did not represent the population of Crimea and Donbass does not require proof.
And unconditional support by Western capitals for the actions of the criminal Kyiv regime is nothing more than a violation of the principle of self-determination following gross interference in internal affairs.
The adoption of racist laws that followed the coup during the reign of Poroshenko and then Zelensky banning everything Russian, education, the media, culture, the destruction of books and monuments, the ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the seizure of its property, all this became a defiant violation of paragraph 3 of Article 1 of the Charter The UN is about respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for everyone, without distinction of race, gender, language or religion.
Not to mention the fact that these actions directly contradicted the Constitution of Ukraine, which establishes the state’s obligation to respect the rights of Russians and other national minorities.
When we hear calls to implement the peace formula and return Ukraine to the 1991 borders, the question arises: are those who call for this familiar with the statements of the Ukrainian leadership about what they are going to do with the inhabitants of the corresponding territories?
So, threats of legal or physical extermination are repeatedly made against them publicly, at the official level.
The West not only does not restrain its proteges in Kyiv, but also enthusiastically encourages their racist policies.
By the way, in a similar way, members of the European Union and NATO have been encouraging for decades the actions of Latvia and Estonia to defeat the rights of hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking residents, whom they called non-citizens.
Now they are seriously discussing the introduction of criminal liability for the use of their native language.
Senior officials have officially stated that the dissemination of information about the possibility of local students taking Russian distance school programs should be considered almost a threat to national security, and this requires the attention of law enforcement agencies.
Returning to Ukraine.
The signing of the Minsk agreements in February 2015 was approved by a special resolution of the Security Council, in full compliance with Article 36 of the Charter, "supporting any procedure for resolving the dispute that was accepted by the parties, in this case Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk."
However, last year, all the signatories of the Minsk agreements, except Vladimir Putin, and these are Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko, publicly and even with pleasure admitted that when they signed this document, they did not intend to implement it.
They only sought to gain time to strengthen Ukraine’s military potential and pump it up with weapons against Russia.
All these years, the EU and NATO directly supported the sabotage of the Minsk agreements, pushing the Kiev regime to forcefully resolve the Donbass problem.
This was done in violation of Article 25 of the Charter, according to which all UN members are obliged to obey and implement the decisions of the Security Council.
Let me remind you that in the package with the Minsk agreements, the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine signed a declaration in which Berlin and Paris pledged to do a lot, including helping to restore the banking system in Donbass.
But they didn't lift a finger.
They only watched as, contrary to all these obligations, Poroshenko declared a trade, economic and transport blockade of Donbass.
In the same declaration, Berlin and Paris pledged to promote the strengthening of trilateral cooperation in the European Union-Russia-Ukraine format for the practical solution of issues that concern Russia in the field of trade, "as well as to promote the creation of a common humanitarian and economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean."
This declaration was also approved by the Security Council and it was also subject to implementation in accordance with the mentioned Article 25 of the UN Charter.
But this commitment by the leaders of Germany and France turned out to be empty, another violation of the statutory principles.
The legendary Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, mister Gromyko, rightly noted many times: it is better to have ten years of negotiations than one day of war.
Following this covenant, we negotiated for many, many years.
We sought the conclusion of agreements in the field of European security.
We approved the Russia-NATO Founding Act.
We adopted OSCE declarations on the indivisibility of security at the highest level in 1999 and 2010.
And since 2015, we have insisted on the unconditional implementation of the Minsk agreements that were the result of the negotiations.
This is all in full compliance with the UN Charter, which requires, "to ensure conditions for fairness and respect for obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law."
Western colleagues also ignored this principle when they signed all these documents, knowing in advance that they would not comply with them.
Speaking of negotiations.
We still do not refuse them.
President Putin spoke about this many times, including most recently.
And, I would like to remind the distinguished Secretary of State that President Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting negotiations with the Putin government.
If the United States is so interested in negotiations, then I think that it will not be difficult for them to give the command so that this Zelensky decree is canceled.
Today in the rhetoric of our opponents we hear only slogans about invasion, aggression, annexation.
They don’t say a word about the underlying causes of the problem, about how for many years they nurtured an openly Nazi regime that openly rewrote the results of the World War Two and the history of its own people.
The West avoids a substantive conversation based on facts and respect for all the requirements of the UN Charter.
Apparently, it has no arguments for an honest dialogue.
There is a strong impression that Western representatives are afraid of professional discussions that expose their demagoguery.
While pronouncing incantations about the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the former colonial metropolises are keeping silent about the UN decisions on the need for Paris to return the so-called French Mayotte to the Union of the Comoros Islands, and for London to leave the Chagos Archipelago and begin negotiations with Buenos Aires on the Malvinas Islands.
These supporters of the territorial integrity of Ukraine are now pretending that they do not remember the meaning of the Minsk agreements, let me remind you, which was concluded for the reunification of Donbass with Ukraine with guarantees of respect for fundamental human rights, first of all, the right to one’s native language.
The West, which thwarted the implementation of these agreements, bears direct responsibility for the collapse of Ukraine and for inciting a civil war there.
Among other principles of the UN Charter, respect for which could prevent a security crisis in Europe and help agree on confidence-building measures based on a balance of interests, I will note Article 2 of Chapter 8 of the UN Charter.
It enshrines the need to develop the practice of peaceful resolution of disputes with the help of regional organizations.
In accordance with this principle, Russia, together with its allies, has consistently advocated the establishment of contacts between the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the CSTO, and NATO to facilitate the practical implementation of the above-mentioned decisions of the OSCE summits on the indivisibility of security, providing, in particular, the following:
"That no single state, group of states, or organization can be given primary responsibility for maintaining peace and stability in the OSCE region, or consider any part of that region as its sphere of influence."
Everyone knows that this is exactly what NATO has been doing: it has been trying to create its full advantage in Europe, and now in the Asia-Pacific region.
But numerous appeals from the highest bodies of the CSTO to NATO were ignored.
The reason for such an arrogant position of the United States and its allies, as everyone can see today, is the reluctance to conduct any kind of equal dialogue with anyone.
If NATO had not rejected the CSTO's proposals for cooperation, then perhaps this would have avoided many of the negative processes that led to the current European crisis due to the fact that for decades they refused to listen to Russia, or they deceived it.
Today, when, at the suggestion of the Chairmanship, we discuss effective multilateralism, we should not forget about the numerous facts of the West’s complete rejection of any form of equal cooperation.
Consider Borrell’s statement that Europe is a blooming garden surrounded by jungle.
This is a purely neocolonial syndrome that despises the sovereign equality of states and the tasks of strengthening the principles of the UN Charter through effective multilateralism, which are brought to our discussion today.
In an effort to prevent the democratization of interstate relations, the United States and its allies are increasingly openly and unceremoniously privatizing the secretariats of international organizations.
They are pushing through, bypassing established procedures, decisions to create mechanisms subordinate to them with non-consensual mandates, but with a claim to the right to blame those who for some reason are not pleasing to Washington.
In this regard, I would like to remind you of the need for strict implementation of the UN Charter not only by member states, but also by the Secretariat of our organization.
In accordance with Article 100 of the Charter, the Secretariat is required to act impartially and it must not receive instructions from any government.
We have already talked about Article 2 of the UN Charter.
And, I want to draw your attention to its key item number 1: The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of states.
Developing this principle, the UN General Assembly, in the 1970 Declaration I mentioned, confirmed, "the inalienable right of every state to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system without interference from anyone."
In this regard, we have serious questions about the statements that our distinguished Secretary General made on March 29 that, "autocratic rule does not guarantee stability, it is a catalyst for chaos and conflict, and strong democratic societies are capable of self-correction and self-improvement. They can stimulate change, even radical change, without bloodshed or violence."
I can’t help but remember the changes brought about by the aggressive adventures of strong democracies in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and many other countries.
The honorable Antonio Guterres went on to say, and "that democracies are centers of broad cooperation rooted in the principles of equality, participation and solidarity."
It is noteworthy that all these speeches were made at the so-called Summit for Democracy, convened by President Joe Biden outside the UN, the participants of which were selected by the American administration on the basis of loyalty, and loyalty not so much to Washington as to the ruling Democratic Party in the United States.
Attempts to use such peer-to-peer forums to discuss issues of a global nature directly contradict paragraph 4 of Article 1 of the UN Charter, which sets out the need, "to ensure the role of the UN as a center for coordinating actions in achieving common goals."
Contrary to this principle, several years ago France and Germany proclaimed an alliance of multilateralists, into which they also invited only those who are obedient, which in itself again confirms the reluctance to get rid of the colonial mentality, and the attitude of the initiators to the principle of effective multilateralism, which is on our agenda today.
At the same time, the idea of the European Union as the ideal of that same multilateralism was inculcated.
There are now calls from Brussels to expand the EU's membership as soon as possible, including, in particular, the Balkan countries.
But the main pathos is not about Serbia, not about Turkey, which have been conducting hopeless negotiations on joining the EU for decades, but about Ukraine.
Claiming to be an ideologist of Euro-integration, Borrell recently did not hesitate to speak out that the Kiev regime should be accepted into the European Union as soon as possible.
Allegedly, if not for the war, this would have taken years, but this can and should be done without any criteria.
Serbia, Turkiye and others will wait.
And Ukraine needs to be admitted into the European Union out of turn.
By the way, at the same Summit for Democracy, the Secretary General declared:
"Democracy stems from the UN Charter. The first words of the UN Charter - we the peoples - reflect the fundamental source of legitimacy: the consent of those under control."
It is useful to correlate this thesis with the track record of the Kiev regime, which launched a war against a huge part of its own people, against those millions of people who did not consent to govern themselves to neo-Nazis and Russophobes who illegally seized power in the country and buried the Minsk agreements approved by the UN Security Council, thereby undermining territorial integrity of Ukraine.
For those who, contrary to the UN Charter, divide humanity into democracies and autocracies, it would not hurt them to answer the question of which category they classify the Ukrainian regime in?
I'm not expecting an answer.
Speaking about the principles of the UN Charter, the question arises about the relationship of the Security Council with the General Assembly.
The Western collective has been aggressively and for a long time pushing the topic of abuse of the veto right, and, through not entirely correct pressure on other UN members, it achieved a decision that after each use of this right, which the West is increasingly deliberately provoking, the corresponding topic should be considered at the General Assembly.
This does not pose any problem for us.
Because Russia’s approaches to all issues on the agenda are open, we have nothing to hide, and it is not difficult for us to state this position again.
In addition, the use of the veto is an absolutely legitimate tool provided for in the UN Charter in order to prevent the adoption of decisions that would be fraught with a split in the Organization.
But, if the procedure for discussing cases of the use of the veto at the General Assembly is approved, then why not think about those Security Council resolutions that were not vetoed, which were adopted, including many years ago, but which are never implemented, notwithstanding the provisions of Article 25 of the UN Charter.
Why doesn't the General Assembly consider the reasons for this state of affairs, for example, with regard to Security Council resolutions on Palestine, and on the entire range of problems of the Middle East and North Africa, on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as well as on resolution 22-02, which approved the Minsk agreements on Ukraine.
The problem associated with sanctions regimes also requires attention.
It has already become the norm that the Security Council, after lengthy negotiations, in strict accordance with the UN Charter, approves sanctions against a specific country, and then the United States and its allies impose additional so-called unilateral restrictions against the same state, which have not received approval in the Security Council and are not included in its resolution as part of the agreed package.
In this same series, there is another glaring example: this is the decision just taken by Berlin, Paris and London, through their national legislation, to extend the restrictions on Iran that expire in October, which are subject to legal termination in accordance with resolution 22-31.
That is, European countries and Britain say that the Security Council decision has expired, but they don’t care about this, they have their own rules.
All this makes it more urgent to consider the issue of ensuring that after the Security Council adopts any sanctions resolution, none of the UN members would have the right to devalue it by introducing their own illegitimate restrictions against the same country.
It is also important that all sanctions regimes through the Security Council be time-limited, since their open-ended nature deprives the Council of flexibility in terms of influencing the policies of sanctioned governments.
The topic of the so-called humanitarian limits of sanctions also requires attention.
It would be right that henceforth the introduction of any sanctions projects to the Security Council would be accompanied by the provision of assessments of their consequences for citizens through UN humanitarian agencies, and not by demagogic statements from Western colleagues that ordinary people will not suffer.
Dear Colleagues.
The facts speak of a deep crisis in international relations and a lack of desire and will in the West to overcome this crisis.
But I hope that a way out of the current situation still exists, and it will be found.
To begin with, everyone needs to realize responsibility for the fate of our Organization, and for the fate of the world in a historical context, and not from the point of view of opportunistic electoral and momentary alignments in the next national elections of a particular member state.
Let me remind you again: almost 80 years ago, by signing the UN Charter, world leaders agreed to respect the sovereign equality of all states, large and small, rich and poor, monarchies and republics.
In other words, even then humanity recognized the need for an equal, polycentric world order as a guarantee of the sustainability and security of its development.
Therefore, today we are not talking about submitting to some kind of rules based world order, but we are talking about fulfilling by everyone the obligations assumed when signing and ratifying the UN Charter in its entirety and interconnection.
Thank you for attention.
