Jeff Monson answered Arnold Schwarzenegger point by point why Russia needed to launch a special operation in Ukraine 👇

https://youtu.be/i6kP4g5Ng04

🎙 Statement of Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in connection with the appeal of the UN Secretariat to ensure a ceasefire in Ukraine

💬 We took note of today’s statement by the UN Secretary-General calling on Russia to ensure a ceasefire in Ukraine for humanitarian operations.

We regret that in the same statement Antonio Guterres did not give any assessment of the actions of those members of the UN Security Council who on March 23 torpedoed the efforts of the Russian delegation to form conditions for the work of humanitarian workers on the ground that are binding for all parties to implement.

Once again, we remind of the content of the Russian draft of truly humanitarian resolution of the UN Security Council on Ukraine 👇

1) a call to establish a ceasefire and have humanitarian pauses to facilitate safe evacuation of civilians, as well as enabling unimpeded exit (free from any discrimination) from the territory of Ukraine to all those willing to leave;
2) a call to not attack critical infrastructure;
3) calls to not place heavy equipment in residential quarters and densely populated areas;
4) protection of humanitarian and medical personnel;
5) proper protection of the sick and wounded;
6) humane treatment of detainees;
7) protection of civilians, especially women and children.

☝️ We regret that the efforts of humanitarian workers in this country are becoming hostages to the geopolitical ambitions of the Western curators of Kiev.

We are still ready to cooperate with colleagues in the UN Security Council on the humanitarian track in Ukraine. We are open to discuss all the modalities. Daily humanitarian corridors are being open. The Russian Armed Forces guarantee safe evacuation through them to everyone who wishes to do so.

🎙 Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the outcomes of the European Council meeting in Brussels on March 24-25, 2022

💬 The results of the European Council’s meeting, held jointly with US leaders, reaffirmed the fact that the collective West needs Ukraine – a country that is completely controlled by Washington and in the grips of Russophobia – only as a geopolitical battering ram against Russia. This is why Ukrainian neo-Nazis are given money, weapons and ammunition which they use to kill civilians. They receive assurances of solidarity and unconditional support, and the cities destroyed by the neo-Nazis, whose residents are hiding from them in basements, are declared bastions of freedom and European values. However, the Kiev authorities’ mistaken bet is that the aggressive anti-Russian policy they are enthusiastically pursuing will hasten the day that they receive a “membership card” in the EU. Questions about Ukraine’s EU prospects are invariably answered with polite excuses.

The EU leaders’ attempts to assume the role of defenders of international law while accusing Russia of violating it are particularly inappropriate. As a reminder, in circumvention of the UN Security Council, the Western countries unleashed a series of military “humanitarian interventions” in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria and have been turning a blind eye to the genocide organised by Kiev in Donbass for many years now. With regard to “war crimes,” since 2014 Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened hundreds of criminal cases against the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalions for the atrocities they have committed against civilians in Donbass.

The EU calls for Russia to provide humanitarian corridors in Ukraine are part of these attempts as well. Over the past weeks, the Russian Defence Ministry has been opening, on a daily basis, humanitarian corridors going in a variety of directions for civilians and Ukrainian military who have laid down their arms.

☝️ Brussels vows to impose more sanctions on Russia if necessary, failing to mention that only the United States will benefit from them, since it is profiting from the outflow of capital from the EU and increased exports of weapons and LNG at exorbitant prices to European markets. With their actions, the bureaucrats in Brussels are, in fact, undermining the EU countries’ economies, which they poorly understand to begin with. They are dooming Europe and everyday Europeans to the demolition of the existing socially oriented economic model and way of life amid skyrocketing prices for electricity and fuel, as well as cuts in social benefits in favour of military budgets, runaway inflation and mass unemployment.

As for the decision adopted by the European Council regarding the “reconstruction of a democratic Ukraine” and the establishment of a dedicated foundation towards this end, we consider it a belated decision. As we know, Ukraine's evolution towards democracy was suspended in February 2014, when an unconstitutional coup was carried out in Kiev at the behest of Western countries. Ukraine and its neighbours have been reaping the consequences for over eight straight years already. Now is the time for decisive measures to de-Nazify and demilitarise Ukraine, which is what the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are doing. We remain confident that once these measures have been fully implemented, the Ukrainian people will return to a peaceful and neighbourly path of development. The European Union, as well as its Western partners, has yet to realise the tragic consequences of flooding an aggressive neo-Nazi regime in central Europe with money and weapons.

ON US-FUNDED BIOLABS IN UKRAINE

For those who wish to study the issue closer - here's a collection of Russian Defense Ministry presentations (🇷🇺/🇬🇧), as well as statements made by Russian Foreign Ministry officials (🇬🇧) on US-funded biolabs in Ukraine and their activities

🔗Direct link: https://bit.ly/3wJ6uu4

💬 Russian MFA Spokesperson Maria Zakharova: The European Union supported the policy of discrimination against the people of Crimea by imposing restrictions to punish the people on the peninsula for making the democratic choice to be with Russia. These were the wrong people. Segregate them. This was the gist of their policy, even if they did not call it that way.

All these years, the EU couldn’t care less about water or human rights. Brussels never issued any statements warning Kiev against using water as war tactic.

(excerpt from weekly briefing of 24.03.22)

💬 Russian MFA Spokesperson Maria Zakharova: In the current circumstances of protecting people who have been subject to genocide, abuse, torture and oppression for eight years in Ukraine, the United States and its allies are hypocritically trying to feign righteous anger and cynically discussing alleged violation of international law – which they bombed to dust in 1999, repeating this “successful” experience multiple times in the 2000s. It is not their sermon to preach.

(excerpt from weekly briefing of 24.03.22)

🎙 FM Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the Serbian media, Moscow

📺 WATCH
📰 READ

Key points:

🔹 We are seeing unprecedented pressure as part of a general campaign, which some Western politicians call an all-out war against Russia where all means are justified.

🔹 This multi-ethnic self-reproducing bureaucracy with a seat in Brussels is trying to subjugate all countries without exception and concentrate all efforts to establishing rules and standards at the headquarters of the European Union, reducing to a minimum what its member countries can do on their own.

🔹 We are seeing attempts by the US, the EU and NATO to impose their hegemony on others, not only in the Balkans but also in the rest of the world –virtually everywhere else. I am convinced that most of the countries around the world realise that this is the path to a deadlock.

🔹 The United States has subdued the entire Europe. As for democracies and autocracies, this “community of democracies” represented by the US, NATO and the EU has become an integral whole (under US command). It is an overt autocracy if not a dictatorship as regards other members of the international community.

🔹Isolation doesn’t exist and is brought up exclusively by those who, mentally and ideologically, have resigned themselves to the inevitability of a Western dictatorship on the global stage. This dictatorship is supported primarily by the West itself which is loath to lose its positions. The West has been the world's dominant player for over 500 years now. A different era – the forming of a multipolar international order – is now here.

🔹 The West is trying to showcase the so-called “isolation” in which the Russian Federation allegedly found itself by presenting the mathematical results of the UN vote. We are aware of how they get these results and the kind of shameless blackmail the developing countries are subjected to, and personal threats against the representatives of these countries at the UN or other organisations. For us, this means only one thing: the United States and the Western countries that are playing along with this crude and undisguised blackmail are themselves afraid of being isolated.

🔹 Our Western colleagues did not give a damn (excuse me for this expression) about the sovereign equality of states or international law, generally speaking. They no longer use the latter term. They are saying now that all countries must follow the laws of a rules-based order. The rules mean only one thing – they are established by the West. Everyone else must obey. This is a typical example of autocracy and dictatorship that uses an ultimatum.

🔹 Isolation is the lot of those who couldn’t imagine their life without so-called “Western values” and without the welcoming embrace or at least a more or less warm reception in the West. Meanwhile, there are much more important things in life. They are a loadstar for the overwhelming majority of states and civilisations on this planet.

🔹 It is necessary to respect each other rather than impose one’s pseudo values in an aggressive manner. These have only existed for a short time. They appeared with the development of neo-liberalism and are used to discontinue millennia-old cultures and civilisations. This path is a dead-end. These attempts will continue for a while, but they are doomed in the historical perspective.

🎙 Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s answer to a media question about a video depicting how the Ukrainian military is humiliating Russian POWs

❓There are video clips on the internet showing how fighters from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) humiliate Russian POWs and they record their murder. What do the defenders of human rights in the Council of Europe and the OSCE ODIHR say about this?

💬 Maria Zakharova: They remain silent. They don’t react in any way to these war crimes and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. Russophobia blinds them.

Nobody in Strasbourg has raised the issue of expelling Ukraine from the Council of Europe even though there are plenty reasons to do so. ODIHR Director Matteo Mecacci is focusing his anger on Russia alone. Moral and ethical principles and political integrity have been lost. What can we discuss with these institutions?

This silence means complicity in the committed atrocities. Complicity is also a crime.

Read in full

💬 Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine:

❗️This list of problems caused by Kiev is expanding. There is an increased danger of floating Ukrainian mines at sea. Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey have already faced or are about to face this perilous problem. In this context, let me underscore that Russian armed forces pose no threat to freedom of civil navigation.

👉 Washington and its allies have a choice now. They can choose to stop fueling Ukrainian crisis, delivering weapons to the Kiev regime, and provoking a global food crisis and hunger in a number of states.

Read in full

💬 Right of reply by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy to the representative of the United States:

❓You surely know who Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are. They collaborated with Nazis, took part in killings of Jews, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians. If you doubt it, ask the Poles.

Russia-Ukraine Negotiations – ‘constructive’ framework revealed

Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky has disclosed key points of Istanbul negotiations:

▪️Ukraine is ready to become a neutral state, unable to own nuclear weapons, with internationally guaranteed independence

▪️Guarantees will not be extended to Donbass region and Russia owned Crimean Peninsula - which would make Kiev formally abandon idea to annex them militarily

▪️Kiev proposed to include in agreement that Moscow would not be against Ukraine’s entry into EU

▪️Ukraine would be unable to have any military presence - including NATO and Russian forces

▪️Kiev is requesting for final treaty to be formalised by Russian and Ukrainian heads of states

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‘De-escalation Does Not Mean Ceasefire’: Chief Russian Negotiator Talks to RT

The Head of the Russian delegation for negotiations with Ukraine Vladimir Medinsky has said that the announced de-escalation of the ‘special operation’ near Kiev and Chernigov does not equal a ceasefire.

He called the de-escalation a first “reciprocal” step following the Istanbul talks, with the potential second being a meeting between presidents Putin and Zelensky, where they would formalise a peace treaty.

Medinsky also pointed out that the treaty itself is still a long way ahead, and that Moscow is yet to officially respond to Kiev’s proposals.

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Testimonies of many civilians in Mariupol about how Ukrainian militants held them hostage and about the atrocities that Ukrainian Nazis did to civilians.

Watch with English subtitles.

For the past month, residents of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol have had to live below ground in bomb shelters or basements

RT's Roman Kosarev visited one of the many shelters to hear their stories.

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