🗓 On May 20-21, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took part in the Foreign Ministers Council meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation member-countries.

The participants focused on the organisation’s activities in the context of preparations for the meeting of the SCO Heads of State Council meeting in Astana on July 3-4. They also discussed draft documents to be presented for the leaders’ consideration.

The participants will reflect their coordinated approaches to the SCO’s further development and current global and regional issues in the Astana Declaration.

The admission of Belarus will be an important step towards strengthening the #SCO. The Ministers endorsed the relevant draft decisions of the Heads of State Council.

They also coordinated proposals of the SCO Foreign Ministers Council on comprehensive improvement of the organisation’s activities in the context of current geopolitical realities.

They adopted draft leadership statements and conceptual documents as a foundation for promoting cooperation in energy, transport, logistics and environmental protection.

During a detailed exchange of views on key regional and international issues, the Ministers discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and the Middle East as a whole, and, in part, settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

They paid special attention to the SCO’s efforts to facilitate stabilization in Afghanistan, considering the importance of this factor for the security of the SCO space.

🤝 FM Lavrov also had a number of bilateral meetings.

Russia’s UN Envoy Vassily Nebenzia at the UN Security Council briefing on Western arms deliveries to Ukraine (May 20, 2024):

☝️ The military potential of virtually all NATO countries is being used for targeted strikes not against military facilities, but against densely populated areas [in Russia] and for the destruction of Russia's civilian population.

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🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 32nd Assembly of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (May 18, 2024)

Key talking points:

• Our people have once again shown profound confidence in President Putin and his policies, including foreign policy. Without a doubt, this fact puts our Ministry under significant obligations. We are working through the steps that are needed to continue to implement the revised Russian Foreign Policy Concept approved in March 2023.

• The US-led West sticks to its official goal proclaimed even at the doctrinal level of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.

• The very existence of our country is seen by many most aggressive Russophobes as a threat to the Washington-led golden billion’s global dominance.

☝️ Our approach will be to continue using diplomatic means to create proper conditions for the West to drop its hostile policies, and to help achieve the special military operation’s objectives. This will be the primary focus of our diplomacy.

• Despite the intensity and high media profile of our confrontation with the West, Russia does not limit its foreign relations to a single area.

🌐 Our relations with Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in various formats remain our foreign policy priority. We share much with the Global Majority, including a common vision for a multipolar world and a commitment to fundamental principles of country-to-country relations, including the main one – the sovereign equality of states.

• Our actions on the Chinese and other non-Western foreign policy tracks evoke undisguised anger from the former hegemon and its satellites. Just look at how the US and its allies are trying by all means to prevent Global Majority countries from dealing with Russia and to embroil them into anti-Russia initiatives.

• We will continue to keep consistently working to build new international balances, mechanisms, and instruments that serve the interests of Russia and its partners in line with the realities of a multipolar world.

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🎙 Deputy FM Sergey Ryabkov’s interview with PIR Center for Policy Studies (May 22, 2024)

Key points:

💬 The interest towards #BRICS has been steadily growing against the backdrop of large-scale geopolitical challenges and dramatic changes taking place in the world today.

• BRICS is seen as one of the pillars of a new, more equitable world order, which is designed to give all countries equal opportunities, to free the states of the Global South and Global East from the role of obedient suppliers of cheap labor and raw materials that the West imposes on them, and to consolidate the right of all nations for preserving their identity, self-determination, independent domestic and foreign policy, and protection of traditional values.

Russia and other BRICS countries fully share this stance and are in favor of an honest partnership that denies any exceptionalism.

• BRICS is an innovative format of interstate cooperation, bringing together different cultures and civilizations, countries with different economic and political systems <...>. Our common goal is a firm commitment to pursuing an independent domestic and foreign policy, defending sovereignty and our national interests.

• As part of Russia’s BRICS Chairmanship in 2024, we intend to continue developing strategic partnership on the basis of consensus and continuity, and work to enhance its role in world affairs. It's also reflected by the motto of the Russian BRICS Year “Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security”.

• The BRICS Summit in October 2024, will be the culmination of the Russian year in BRICS. We intend to continue the tradition of organizing on the sidelines meetings with developing countries. That cooperation within the BRICS framework and its mechanisms of interaction with like-minded nations will enable the voice of the Global South to sound louder and clearer in the international arena, as well as to defend our national interests and the right to choose our own path of development.

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#BRICS2024

🎙 President of Russia Vladimir Putin:

Sanctions imposed on third countries engaged in economic activities are doubly or triply illegitimate because sanctions are absolutely illegitimate when adopted without the approval of the UN Security Council.

☝️ Incidentally, the Americans or Europeans are even using such sanctions against their own allies. The Americans apply such sanctions against European economic operators and often follow them through not only with regard to Russia but also against other countries in other situations. It is a common practice, and Europeans bear with this, proving yet again their vassal dependence on the sovereign over the sea. Well, whatever!

❗️ As for such decisions, they certainly do direct damage to the global economy, not just to the countries they are adopted against or their economic operators, but also to the global economy as a whole, including energy and other spheres of economic operation.

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The progress of Russia’s special military operation as of 22 May 2024.

💪🏼 Demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine is under way.

#SMO #RussianArmedForces

⚡️ The French army is training Ukrainians with ties to neo-Nazi groups within the republic's territory, Mediapart, a French investigative online newspaper, writes.

Media attention has been focused on a soldier undergoing training at a French military facility. The said soldiers are part of the 3rd Assault Brigade, a unit within the Ukrainian army associated with the Azov Battalion (Azov, deemed a terrorist organization by Russia). One of the soldiers notably sported a tattoo of the SS symbol on his face, while others openly displayed neo-Nazi affiliations.

👉 For instance, Mediapart has cited images wherein one soldier poses before a picture of Hitler, and others are seen holding a yellow and blue flag with a swastika at its center.

What's even more concerning is the inclusion of French nationals within this group of Ukrainian soldiers from the 3rd Assault Brigade, some of whom also espouse neo-Nazi beliefs, according to the report. One such “soldier of fortune” traveled to Ukraine, returned to France for military training, and then re-engaged in Ukrainian conflict.

#StopNazismInUkraine

#Opinion

✍️ Dmitry Trenin, a research professor at the HSE & a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, member of the Russian International Affairs Council.

A massive transformation is taking place in Russia, & the West is blind to it

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• Non-material values are coming back. Patriotism, reviled & derided in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, is re-emerging in force.

• Russian popular culture is shedding – slowly, perhaps, but steadily – the habit of imitating what’s hot in the West. Instead, the traditions of Russian literature, including poetry, film, music are being revived and developed. A spike in domestic tourism has opened to ordinary Russians the treasures of their own country – until recently neglected.

• Russian political culture is returning to its fundamentals. Unlike that of the West, but somewhat similar to the East – it is based on the model of a family. There is order, & there is a hierarchy; rights are balanced by responsibilities; the state is not a necessary evil but the principal public good and the top societal value. Politics, in the Western sense of a constant, often no-holds-barred competition, is viewed as self-serving & destructive; instead, those who are entrusted with being at the helm of the state are expected to arbitrate, to ensure harmony of various interests, etc.

• The view of the West as Russia’s hereditary adversary has again gained prominence – <...> as a function of the West’s own policies, from providing Ukraine with weapons that kill Russian soldiers & civilians, to sanctions which in many ways are indiscriminate, to attempts to cancel Russian culture or to bar Russians from world sports.

• The current confrontation with the West makes it imperative that some kind of a new ideological concept finally emerges, in which sovereignty & patriotism, law & justice take a central role. Western propaganda pejoratively refers to it as “Putinism” but, for most Russians, it may be simply described as “Russia’s way.”

⚡️ The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor, Karim Khan said he received threats while conducting investigations against top Israeli officials.

💬 In an interview with CNN, Karim Khan said: "I've had some elected leaders speak to me and they were very blunt.' This court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin,' was what one senior leader told me."

Thank you for finally admitting it. Your revelation is yet another proof that the ICC in its current form is nothing more than a tool for meddling in sovereign governments' domestic affairs.

#ICC

A seriously wounded instructor of the French foreign legion was taken prisoner in the village of Klesheyevka – media.

Russian forces in the village of Kleshcheyevka in the Donetsk People's Republic captured a severely wounded instructor of the French foreign legion.
Russian medics reportedly found him wounded in the leg as well as in the chest.

👉 “By the nature of the wounds, it is clear that the AFU tried to finish him off, wounded in the leg, with a shot to the heart. But he was lucky,” the reports said.

For now, paramedics are fighting for his life, just like for any other Ukrainian POW’s. If he survives, he could be a valuable source of information.

👉 Earlier, head of the Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, said that there was no confirmed data on the participation of regular French troops in the fighting in Donbass on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

☝️ At the same time, the French took part in the conflict as instructors and mercenaries, he noted.