⚡️ Russia's position at the seventy-eighth session of the UN General Assembly:

START Treaty

📃 Our country's decision to suspend the START Treaty is related, first and foremost, to the US consistent policy aimed at political and economic strangulation of Russia and targeted weakening of its security. Thus, we are witnessing a radical change in the circumstances and Washington's attempts to undermine the fundamental principles and understandings underlying the START Treaty.

To maintain a sufficient level of predictability and stability in the nuclear missile sphere, Russia will continue to observe the Treaty-established quantitative limits on strategic offensive arms within the lifetime of the Treaty. Furthermore, we will continue to exchange notifications on ICBM and SLBM launches with the US based on the relevant bilateral agreement of 1988.

The decision to suspend the START Treaty can be reversed only if the US demonstrates political will and undertakes the necessary efforts to promote general de-escalation, address violations and create conditions for the resumption of the full functioning of that Treaty.

☝️ When deciding on its future, the combined nuclear arsenal of the US, Great Britain and France will have to be taken into account as they, together with other NATO allies, are increasingly putting up a united anti-Russian front in the nuclear area.

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In principle, Russia remains open to interaction with all stakeholders in the relevant international formats aiming for general de-escalation, comprehensive strengthening of security and stability, minimization of strategic risks, including with the use of arms control instruments. However, this can only be achieved on the basis of equality and genuine accommodation of Russia's interests.

🎙 Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (Moscow, September 5, 2023)

🔷 FM Sergey Lavrov’s schedule
🔷 Ukrainian crisis
🔷 The use of Western weapons in Ukraine for attacking civilian facilities
🔷 US State Department Global Engagement Centre’s new bulletin, "The Kremlin's War Against Ukraine’s Children"
🔷 Attack on the Acting Russian Consul-General in Gothenburg

And more...

📚 Read in full

#Ukraine

▪️ I often talk about this, but today I will show you several fragments of NATO munitions we have received from the Defence Ministry of Russia. These horrible “postcards” are designed for those in the EU and NATO countries who believe that their taxes and free donations serve the cause of peace. Look at them. There’s children’s blood on them, the blood of innocent civilians. These munitions were bought, produced and transported with the money of people in the EU countries who talk about peace every day and believe that this is important. Is the EU paying for this kind of peace? Is this the peace that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell regards as ideal? Is this the peace the Western NGOs and media organisations are talking about?

#US

▪️ On August 24, the Global Engagement Centre at the US Department of State published a bulletin, The Kremlin’s War Against Ukraine’s Children, which contains a streak of absurd accusations against Russia relating to the issue of children. This is not just a piece of rampant misinformation distorting facts; it is in fact a terrible Goebbels-style fake narrative. Russia has never hidden what it has been doing in the interests of Ukrainian children who ended up in our territory. On behalf of President Vladimir Putin, most of the work in this area is being carried out by Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, who regularly reports to the public, including the international community, on the situation regarding children evacuated from the war zone.

#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 deleted 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.

☝️ How Russia 🇷🇺 is actually addressing the issue of hunger in the world, without any “deals.”

#RussiaHelps #FoodSecurity

📆 #OnThisDay in 1945, the Allied Soviet, US, British and French forces held a joint parade in Berlin. The anti-Hitler coalition allies marched through the defeated Nazi stronghold of Berlin.

The initiative for this celebration came from the Soviet Union, whose leaders suggested organising a joint Allied military pass-by in Berlin after its own Victory Parade in Moscow in June. It was arranged that it would take place on Alexanderplatz near the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate after the downfall of militarist Japan, their last enemy.

👉 Originally it was assumed that the parade would be reviewed by all the commanders-in-chief of the Allied forces in Germany. On the eve of the event, however, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (USA), Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (GB), and Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (France) refused to attend, sending their representatives instead. This was a clear attempt to belittle the Soviet Union’s role in gaining a victory over the hydra of German Nazism and Japanese militarism.

The Berlin parade involved all branches of the land forces. It was decided to do without Air Force and Navy units because they were deployed far from Berlin. Soviet generals primarily sought to invite officers and men who had particularly distinguished themselves during the assault on Berlin.

The parade began at 11 am on the dot. The stands were filled with Soviet military leaders, generals and admirals of the British, US, and French armies and navies, and a group of US congressmen. Nearly 20,000 Berliners assembled around the parade ground. After reviewing the troops, Marshal Georgy Zhukov delivered a speech praising the historic achievements of the Soviet and Allied forces. Next there was a pass-by of the foot columns.

☝️ The memorable Victory Parade near the Brandenburg Gate was the last symbolic act involving the anti-Hitler coalition Allies. This joint military holiday became a prologue to the Cold War that was about to begin by the West's initiative.

⚡️ Russia's position at the seventy-eighth session of the UN General Assembly:

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention

📃 We support the strengthening of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.

We are gravely concerned over the growing tendency of Euro-Atlantic allies, led by the United States, to "privatize" specialized international organizations, of which the unacceptable situation in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is a graphic example.

❗️ Since 2018, in the vein of the anti-Russian and anti-Syrian rhetoric, NATO and EU countries have completely abandoned the practice of attaining consensus on key issues on the OPCW's agenda, as enshrined in Article VIII of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and replaced it with voting on the basis of bloc discipline.

These consistent efforts resulted in vesting the Technical Secretariat with "attribution" functions in violation of the CWC-established procedure for introducing amendments to the Convention (Article XV). While pursuing its goal of toppling the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad, undesirable for Washington, the "collective West" has virtually undermined the integrity of the Convention and ruined the technical nature of the OPCW's work.

🎙 Remarks by the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov at the Regional seminar "Strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime"

📍 Bishkek, September 7, 2023

💬 It cannot but cause concern that in recent decades a certain group of countries, or to be precise, the States which are the NATO members and their partners, have been trying to usurp the right to interpret the issue of compliance by other State Parties with their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They also have been trying to use the provisions of the Treaty to put pressure on objectionable countries and justify the interference in their internal affairs.

Similarly, the NPT is being seen as a pretext for restricting states' access to nuclear technology.

These factors do not contribute to maintaining the spirit of constructive interaction and the advance of an interested dialogue among States.

Under such circumstances, ensuring the sustainability of the NPT is one of the priorities for maintaining stability on a global scale.

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The situation that led to the suspension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) due to the destructive policy of the United States and its significant violation of this agreement cannot but cause concern.

Nuclear disarmament in the NPT is incorporated in the context of general and complete disarmament, but now we are witnessing an increase in spending on conventional weapons in most States. The US accounts for 40% of all military spending in the world and if we add up the budgets of the armies of NATO countries and their closest allies, we get about two-thirds of global military spending. And this cannot be ignored when talking about the renunciation of nuclear weapons.

Bearing that in mind, there has been no reduction in the nuclear potential of NATO. On the contrary, the so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons of the United States are located on the territory of the alliance States, and vital Russian facilities are within their reach.

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Some results of the SPbU online Russian language course in South Africa

✍️ Online Russian language courses in South Africa have been held by the St Petersburg University Language Testing Centre with the support of the Russian Embassy since 2022.

✅ The courses have been in high demand and positively reviewed by students, which speaks of the promising future of this project.

📊 For the first half of 2023 alone, 980 registered for participation in the course. Among them were mostly people of school and retirement age, people with law, economic and technical qualification.

☝️The enrolment for the new academic year will be opened soon. The classes will start in October 2023 and be held in the morning and evening time for 1.5 hours.

#RussianLanguageCourse #SouthAfrica

🎤📰📹 September 8 marks International #JournalistsSolidarityDay. Today, the world commemorates journalists and media specialists who lost their lives in the line of duty. Words of support are also being offered to those who continue to be attacked and repressed for their work as journalists.

Unfortunately, we are marking this date – intended to raise global awareness of the difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions in which journalists have to work and to remind of the importance of mutual support and unity of media professionals – amid a dismal situation with the protection of media rights and freedom of expression.

☝️ Russian media and journalists have long been targets of systematic harassment in the countries of the collective West, but they have come under truly unprecedented pressure in recent months.

❗️ There has been no appropriate reaction from relevant international organisations to the policy of those “advanced democracies’” to cleanse the information landscape from Russian broadcasters and create unbearable conditions for our correspondents; in fact, they prefer to turn a blind eye to these gross violations of media rights and outright censorship.

It is regrettable that UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other international organisations prefer to ignore the situation instead of taking effective measures to ensure the safety of journalists.

👉 We recommend checking out this list of politically motivated repressions against Russian media, which is far from complete, on the Russian Foreign Ministry website

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In spite of everything, on this day we would like to congratulate all correspondents, editors, photographers and other media workers who are faithful to the ideals of journalistic solidarity and who are always ready to help their colleagues, even if their opinions differ.

For our part, we will continue to defend the rights of our journalists and ensure that those who have illegally usurped the power to set rules and punish dissenters are held accountable.