Update on the Ukrainian crisis (May 17, 2023)
(from the briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry
Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, May 17, 2023)
On May 15, we marked the fifth anniversary of the traffic opening on the automobile part of the Crimean Bridge, which has become the most comfortable link between the mainland and the peninsula. No ideological or political acts of subversion, extremist or terrorist acts, can upset the plans to maintain sustainable logistics connections. Advanced design solutions in building this bridge made it possible to eliminate the consequences of the Kiev regime’s subversion on October 8, 2022 as quickly as possible and restore the traffic on the bridge.
Vladimir Zelensky’s statement on May 13 sounds completely absurd against this background. He said Kiev “will have to spend a lot of time on Crimea’s recovery and work hard to restore everything that the Russians have destroyed there.” I cannot say that he was in his right mind when he said this. It seems to me he was under the influence of something at the time. This is yet another case when we encounter inadequate claims of the Kiev authorities to the now prosperous Russian territory. Representatives of different ethnicities and religions live there in peace and accord. They were waiting and striving for this for a long time and they finally got it. They would probably have no problems at all if it wasn’t for the scheming of the Kiev authorities.
Ukrainian nationalists have recently intensified the shelling of Russia’s territory.
Local residents will remember the Day of the LPR, which is marked on May 12, by a massive missile attack. It was conducted with French-British Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles which London gave to the Zelensky regime. Their fragments were found on the explosion sites. The origin of these weapons does not cause doubts. Strikes are delivered not at military targets but at civilian facilities and residential neighbourhoods of cities to increase civilian losses. I would like to ask the humanists and human rights champions on Downing Street how they feel about this. As always, human rights organisations ignored these obvious violations of international humanitarian law by the Kiev regime. I am referring to Western human rights and humanitarian organisations. Russian agencies are focused on this all the time, publishing information, photos and videos and helping people. I am referring not only to those who are doing this by the call of duty. I am also talking about spontaneously established organisations and volunteer movements, about people who care, who are fighting on the humanitarian frontline.
After a relatively extended quiet period, Lugansk came under fire. Most recently, a polymer product plant, a meat processing plant, and a bus station have been attacked. So much for the West yelling and chest-thumping as it spouts about it taking care of civilians. Have we heard a single word of disapproval regarding Kiev’s actions or the slightest attempt to draw the attention (I’m not even talking about holding accountable) of those who fire shells into densely populated civilian infrastructure? Unfortunately, people were wounded. On May 13, the Orthodox Epiphany Cathedral in Gorlovka (DPR) came under fire. On May 15, another act of sabotage was committed in Lugansk with an improvised explosive device detonated in the central part of that city. Kiev neo-Nazis timed these barbaric attacks to coincide with Zelensky’s European “tour” on May 12-15, when he visited Italy, Germany, France and Great Britain. What was he doing there? His Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said what, “he was gathering weapons for the war.”
While still claiming that it does not intend to supply Kiev with missiles whose range exceeds 300 km, the US seems to have decided to reassign this task to the UK and France. Clearly, they would never have dared deliver long-range missiles to Kiev without Washington’s approval. The recent statements by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Coordinator for Strategic Communication John Kirby to the effect that transferring 200 Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine was a major contribution to the West’s overall effort to provide military support to Ukraine makes it clear that the Anglo-Saxons are pursuing a single mutually agreed and absolutely Russophobic policy which was previously seen in politics, economy and humanitarian sphere, but has, in recent years, graduated to an openly militaristic phase.
We took note of London's plans to boost supplies of long-range weapons, including an additional 400 Storm Shadow units and anti-aircraft missile systems and unmanned aerial systems, including hundreds of attack drones with a range of over 200 km, which were announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 15.
Berlin has livened up as well and confirmed the provision of a major military aid package to the Kiev regime. In the coming months, Kiev will receive German weapons worth 2.7 billion euros. The Ukrainian forces will receive 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 30 Leopard-1 tanks, four IRIS-T SLM anti-aircraft systems and hundreds of guided missiles for them, 200 reconnaissance drones, and over 100 logistic support vehicles.
Brussels is trying to keep pace. According to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, in the current situation the Kiev regime, as well as Ukraine will cease to exist as an independent state without Western aid, so there will be no end to the aid being provided to the Zelensky regime. This means that, according to the Western logic, the war will be fought to the last Ukrainian, as we have said many times. The European Union has already allocated 16 billion euros in military aid to the Kiev regime and trained over 17,000 Ukrainian servicemen. On May 13, 2023, the head of European diplomacy not only welcomed the delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine but also urged countries to boost the supplies of these weapons. Just to remind you, this is their version of diplomacy, since it was said by the EU head of foreign affairs Josep Borrell. In reality, there is no such thing as diplomacy there. What we have are aggressive Russophobic actions aimed at carrying out their long-standing plans to, as they used to say, contain [Russia] and as they say now, to inflict a strategic defeat on our country.
The West has made its role in the conflict abundantly clear: Ukraine serves merely as a tool and Ukrainians as pawns it is ready to sacrifice in its standoff with Russia. The West has sacrificed literally everything on the altar of its morbid geopolitical ambitions. They are “exceptional”. Only they can govern everyone. Nobody has the right to take independent decisions, be it domestic affairs or foreign policy. The previous times of colonialism and imperialism have not receded into the past but rather are being converted to a modern format. This was the only reason for initiating the whole story. Its practical implementation and its result, as they see it, is inflicting strategic defeat on Russia. True, next they mention China and all others who will not obey them.
The European Union proved to be convincing in demonstrating that the Ukrainian crisis is a good way of replenishing coffers, although not national coffers but some others.
As it transpired, the notorious eurosolidarity and the help to Ukraine on resolving the grain issue have already brought EU business people a profit of over 20 billion euros from May 2022 to March 2023. This is how concerned they are about the needy. Do you remember how it all started? With the words that the hungry people must be certainly supplied with food, that they were not in Europe and that everything was done for their sake. As a result, in one year, 20 billion euros were made but not by the needy who could have bought the food they required for this money. Instead, the money went to those who were behind the rising tensions over food supplies in Europe (the EU and NATO). The EU paid the Kiev regime 26 billion euros for Ukraine’s 63 million tonnes of agricultural products and contrived to sell it 23 million tonnes of its own products for a total of 48 billion euros via “solidarity corridors.”
Elementary maths indicates who is fighting for money and for what kind of money and who is standing behind this whole story that looks like a global machination, and who is profiting from the escalation of the conflict. Just imagine – a couple of figures lead to a global revelation.
Westerners continue distorting the truth about events in Ukraine, including in Bucha in late March 2022. The Zelensky regime has turned this town near Kiev into a ritual place of political tourism for foreign guests. Members of the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress visited it, among others. They were accompanied by US Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter during their stay in Ukraine on May 5-6 of this year. Propaganda clichés about the alleged complicity of the Russian military in the murders of civilians came back to life once again in accordance with the previous manuals. However, there is a small nuance.
We have repeatedly emphasised that an honest and unbiased investigation into the situation in Bucha is necessary in order to establish what really happened there. It should answer simple questions about the identification of corpses, time and cause of death and traces of possible movement of bodies. All this is routine for any investigation of even a household crime. Ukraine is now stuffed with military instructors, specialists from various NATO countries, and tracking equipment of any scale and in all areas. So what happened? Why has all this information not been published for a year now? The answer is simple – it was a put-up job. This is why these questions remain unanswered. Our request to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide a full list of the Bucha residents who lost their lives during this period remains relevant. We have received no clear answer to this specific question up to now. We hear from time to time that all information is on social media and something has been published on the internet. I don’t know where or in what social media anything was published. There are official channels of interaction. If we address the UN via its Secretariat, we would like to receive the requested information from it. After all, the Secretariat itself referred to the situation in Bucha many times
All these actions by the Ukrainian authorities and their Western patrons show that the goals set must be reached, as our leadership has said more than once.
