Partnership and Responsibility above Lie and Hypocrisy
by Ambassador Andrey Avetisyan
This year on the 12th of June we celebrate Russia Day for the 30th time. Starting from 1992, the country has been commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After centuries of glorious history newly independent Russia has once again become a young nation enjoying freedom, striving for better future just like as any other nation in the world. Having come through a turbulent decade in the 90s, Russia managed to regain political, economic and military strength that characterized our country for centuries. At the same time, Moscow was showing great openness and true interest in developing equal and sincere partnership with all members of the world community, both politically and economically. Due to this frank approach, we have strengthened our relations with old and new friends in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
We also hoped that open, fair and mutually beneficial cooperation would characterize our relations with Western partners. It seemed to be the case until it became obvious to them that Russia was not a country that would dance to their tunes against its own national interests. So the attitude towards Russia changed completely. The West has adopted a policy to contain Russia (the same line they have later taken towards rising China). Several waves of NATO enlargement towards Russian borders, gradual dismantling of the global security system, efforts to substitute the international law with some kind of rules that they formulate behind closed doors, different sorts of barriers and measures against free trade - these are the features of the Western approach to modern Russia. However, they obviously haven’t taken into consideration that, quoting President Vladimir Putin, “Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy”.
In this context, I have to touch upon the Ukrainian subject. Unfortunately, our neighbor has been chosen by the West to wage a proxy war against my country. They spared no effort to create an Anti-Russia out of Ukraine. The support provided by Washington and Brussels (NATO and the EU) to the Kiev regime in order to turn it into a tool for containing Russia and everything that is Russian came as the high point of their Russophobic policies. All these years, Ukraine has consistently been passing laws banning the use of the Russian language in education, the media, and even in everyday life. That way, all Russian roots and the common history of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples were ripped out in Ukraine.
In recent years, Ukraine has been flooded with weapons, drawn into cooperation with NATO, and nudged towards a forceful solution of the Donbass issue. The Kiev leadership was encouraged to sabotage the Minsk Package of Measures for the peaceful settlement of the crisis in eastern Ukraine even despite the fact that this document is part of international law and was approved by a UN Security Council resolution.
While the Ukrainian leadership was evading its obligations under the Minsk agreements, the nationalists were destroying civilian facilities, schools and hospitals in Donbass. Everyone knows that. These facts, including the killing of civilians, were regularly depicted by our media, but hushed up in the West. Over 10,000 Donbass residents are dead. No one in the West paid attention to the inhuman economic, trade, transport and food blockade of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Kiev’s unconcealed plans to acquire nuclear capability caused our concern. The military biological programmes implemented by the Pentagon in Ukraine and the creation of almost 30 laboratories came to our attention. We raised this issue at the UN Security Council. This is not a one-time act, and this topic will remain in the focus because it is directly related to risks and threats to international peace and security. It is in this vein that we will be asking questions about non-transparent military-biological activities around the globe.
We are particularly concerned about the geopolitical space of the former USSR, where the American military is establishing its bio-laboratories. Even the host countries of these US facilities do not always know what kind of research they are doing there.
President Vladimir Putin explained several times in detail that in this situation we had no choice. An onslaught was waged against us from all sides to impede our development and create a direct threat at our borders. Furthermore, Ukraine officially announced that it would never fulfill the Minsk agreements. The fact of burning all the bridges of dialogue by the West and its clients compelled Russia to recognize the DPR and the LPR and to launch a special military operation at their requests and based on our mutual assistance treaties with them. This operation is aimed at protecting people and their lives from the danger of the war as well as at demilitarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine. We had to make sure that the threats to Russia’s security and the rebirth of Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology and practice, banned by the Nuremberg Trials, would never come from the territory of Ukraine.
The West does not hide its goals but declare them in public: to break, destroy, eliminate and stifle the Russian economy and Russia as a whole. When we see this no-holds-barred sanctions campaign, we understand that nothing stands behind the “values” that our Western colleagues have continuously preached at us: freedom of expression, market economy, inviolability of private ownership or presumption of innocence. As soon as the West had to do something practical as regards Russia, it easily abandoned all these values.
The present-day political culture of Western states is best characterized by
a striving to blame Russia for everything. Among them, allegations related to food security assumed a leading role. Nevertheless, anybody who’s been following this issue knows that in fact a number of different factors have led to the current situation. Among the reasons that triggered it are such consequences of
the COVID-19 pandemic as interruptions in supply chains, growing freight and insurance charges. Steep increase of anti-crisis financial injections in economy also played a role. Add to this all previously started trade wars and lasting contradictions with regard to agricultural market regulations. As a result, food supplies turned out to stand at their lowest in recent 5-10 years, which kicked up food prices and related costs. At the same time, Western states drew over all commodity flows, which aggravated the already complicated situation of import-dependent developing countries.
The universal problem of food shortage cannot be neglected and Russia as
a responsible member of the international community is ready to continue to supply its grain to the world market. Russian grain export only in May has seen almost three times growth. This year we actually expect a record harvest of 130 million tons of grain. However, our exports encounter problems that Western states created artificially. I mean the illegal unilateral coercive measures that affected the area of agriculture even before the recent events in Ukraine. But after 24 February 2022
a true mayhem began. More than 10,000 sanctions were imposed on Russia. They disrupted transportation routes, impeded movement of Russian vessels and banned them from entering ports, caused problems with freight and insurance, restricted international commercial transactions – to name a few.
We know that African countries are among the most vulnerable in terms of food security. Some of them are critically dependent on agricultural imports from Russia. We are aware that these supplies are of great importance for maintaining social stability and achieving the benchmarks stipulated by the UN-approved Sustainable Development Goals. I would like to reassure you that Russia is fulfilling and will continue to honestly fulfill its obligations under international contracts in terms of export supplies of food, fertilizers, energy and other commodities that Africa needs.
Isolating Russia is out of the question (although precisely this goal was set). Nor are we going to self-isolate. We have many friends, allies and partners in the world. In his message to the African leaders on the occasion of Africa Day the Russian President stressed that our country had always placed particular emphasis on expanding friendly relations with African partners. Meeting recently with the Chairperson of African Union President Putin emphasized that “our country has always been on Africa’s side and has always supported Africa in its fight against colonialism”. This includes of course our long-time friendship with Tanzania, which is going back to the days when your nation, led by a good friend of my country Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, freed itself from colonial yoke.
In the interests of our peoples, it is important to work together to maintain and expand mutually beneficial trade and investment ties in the new circumstances in order to be able to rely on dependable supply and finance mechanisms that are protected against external interference. Therefore, we very much appreciate the efforts of President Samia Suluhu Hassan to open Tanzania to new opportunities in economic development and my priority as the Russian Ambassador will be to facilitate the mutual access of Russian and African economic operators to each other's markets and to encourage their engagement in major infrastructure projects.
Together with all sorts of trade and economic ties we will continue to provide Tanzanian youth with scholarships to study in the best Russian universities. This year their number will exceed fifty and I expect that the next year it will be more since the Russian Government has decided to gradually increase the annual quota of students admitted from Africa. Being very much impressed by the rich and diverse culture of the people of Tanzania I’ll do my best to further expand our exchanges including bringing Russian music, dance and art teachers to work with your talented youth. In addition to culture and student exchanges, we will continue to focus on expanding and deepening social, scientific, youth and sports contacts.
These tasks are central to preparations for the second Russia-Africa Summit which are ongoing in close coordination with our African friends. Russia has always been here in Africa supporting our brothers’ struggle for independence from colonial powers, celebrating the birth of new nations, helping them to firmly stand on their feet. And today while celebrating our own National Day, my message to the Tanzanian people is: be assured that we, the Russians, still keep the African cause as close to our hearts as ever.
The Guardian
June 13, Monday
