Interview with Maria Zakharova,* interviewed by Guy Mettan**
(11 July 2022) (GM) After almost four months of armed fights in Ukraine, the word has been only seldom and partially given to the Russian party, presented in the western media as the "aggressor" and the unique responsible of the conflict.
As the military operations are shifting on the ground and negotiations appear again as a possible mean to stop the war, it seems important to understand why Russia has considered unavoidable to start its "special military operation", what are the Moscow's real goals, at which conditions the hostilities could be stopped and how this conflict affects the world and is reshaping the global order from a Russian point of view. To understand is no to justify but is a pre-requirement to rebuild peace and trust. That’s why we have asked Mrs Maria Zakharova, speaker of the Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs, to answer comprehensively to our questions. The exchange has taken place on 12 June, the eve of the "Saint-Petersburg International Economic Forum" during a 90-minutes meeting and is presented in a shortened version.
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Guy Mettan: Could you sum up and explain again the main causes of the present military operations in Ukraine?
Maria Zakharova: It is true that we see no objective information in the West regarding the situation in Ukraine and the reasons, goals and objectives of the special military operation. Let me then start from the beginning.
In February 2014, an unconstitutional coup d'état directly supported by the West propelled violent nationalists to power, who began a policy directed against their own people and aimed at coercive ukrainisation and destruction of all things Russian. For eight years, the Kiev regime blatantly violated human rights, trampled on freedom of speech and the media, fought against the Russian language, which is the native language of tens of millions of Ukrainians, and the Russian culture, while also exterminating political opponents. A civil war was unleashed in Donbass, and the peace plan agreed upon and approved by the UN Security Council, which was the Package of Measures to Implement the Minsk Agreements, was completely ignored by Kiev. The West turned a blind eye to all of this, indulging its Ukrainian minions and, at times, spurring them on.
What do you mean by that?
Encouraged by their support, Kiev never seriously paused to consider a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the east of the country. Instead, it imposed a transport and economic blockade against Donbass, and stopped paying pensions and social benefits. All those years, people in the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics were subjected to artillery and mortar fire by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the nationalist units. Thousands of innocent people, including children, were killed and tens of thousands injured, as confirmed by official reports of the OSCE and the United Nations. What is this if not action aimed at the total annihilation of the people of Donbass?
Russia made enormous mediation efforts to peacefully resolve the internal Ukrainian conflict. But it was also impossible to ignore the crimes committed by the Kiev regime. Incidentally, the special operation has helped uncover evidence of Kiev's plans for a full-scale invasion of the DPR and LPR in March of this year.
Apparently, Washington and its allies prepared Ukraine for retaliation in Donbass starting from 2014. According to Pentagon officials, the United States provided Ukraine with $2.7 billion in military aid between 2014 and the start of the special military operation. Moreover, NATO military made comprehensive use of Ukrainian territory. Western instructors actively trained Ukrainian servicemen, including outright neo-Nazis. The number of military drills involving NATO countries in Ukraine constantly grew.
From when? To what extent?
Seven drills were conducted in 2021 with nine slated for 2022. Their scale also increased. If last year 21,000 Ukrainian servicemen who took part in multilateral exercises, the number was expected to be 40,000 this year. The number of NATO representatives was expected to climb to 22,000 from 11,000 last year. The increase in the military equipment was manifold, with 240 airplanes and helicopters against 37 last year and 160 warships against 26 in 2021.
This is despite the fact that the presence of foreign armed forces in Ukraine directly contradicted Paragraph 10 of the Minsk Package of Measures. This cannot be called anything other than an intervention, and it was going on in the immediate vicinity of our borders.
How do you evaluate the exercises?
NATO's military build-up near our borders in the Black Sea only aggravated the situation. The Alliance’s forces were literally on combat duty in the Black Sea. Warships of non-regional powers, primarily the US, never left those waters. Several NATO countries conducted unscheduled exercises under the command of the US Sixth Fleet in the first half of November 2021.
In fact, the US paved the way to the establishment of a multinational grouping of NATO's armed forces in Ukraine and destabilised the situation in the region. Kiev's aspirations to obtain nuclear weapons, which Vladimir Zelensky publicly voiced in February of this year, also posed a serious risk to international security.
Ukraine's return to the origins of its statehood
How did Russia react?
All of this taken together resulted in Russia's recognition of the DNR and LNR as sovereign and independent states on February 21, 2022. The President of Russia then made the decision to launch a Special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine on February 24 in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, with the authorisation of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly’s Federation Council and at the request of the leaders of the DNR and LNR. We were left no other choice.
Its main goals and objectives were the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, the protection of civilians in Donbass from genocide, and the elimination of threats to Russia from Ukrainian territory due to its exploitation by NATO countries.
What are the main goals Russia is presently trying to achieve in Ukraine? I kept in mind three main objectives: "denazification, demilitarization and neutralization". What do you mean exactly by these words?
Let me try to comment on each of them briefly. At the outset, I would like to make one fundamental correction. You mentioned something called neutralization as one of the special military operation goals. This isn't the right term. What we mean is restoring Ukraine's status as a neutral, non-aligned and non-nuclear state, that is, the country's return to the origins of its statehood as laid out in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty.
Regarding denazification, I would like to remind you that in 2014, when the radical nationalists usurped power in Ukraine following the anti-constitutional coup d'état, glorification of Nazi collaborators from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – who openly murdered Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians, and representatives of other ethnic groups, as well as the "wrong" Ukrainians during World War II – began at the state level.
Could you expand on this?
Over the next eight years, the atrocities of OUN-UPA fighters, who killed thousands of civilians, were presented as a struggle for freedom. Streets and stadiums were named after Hitler's accomplices such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Nazi units – the Right Sector, C14, Trizub, Azov, Donbass, Aidar, etc – openly operated in the country. Torchlight processions were held, terrifying civilians. Some of these units were later integrated in the Ukrainian armed forces. For eight years, they shelled communities and civilian infrastructure in Donbass. They looted, raped and killed. There is blood of civilians, our contemporaries, on their hands. That Nazi license had to be curtailed.
President Vladimir Putin wanted to put an end to it?
Yes. That is why he declared denazification – the eradication of Nazism and Nazis – as one of the special military operation's goals. Russia has no plans to divide or destroy the Ukrainian nation, as Western propaganda is trying to show, but is trying to protect it by finally ridding the people of Ukraine, Russia and the rest of Europe from the brown plague of Nazism and fascism that was rearing its head in Ukraine. The terrible lessons of World War II were convincing confirmation of the need to do this.
The demilitarisation of Ukraine is underway now. The Russian Armed Forces, together with the people's militias of the DPR and LPR, are consistently destroying the excessive numbers of weapons and equipment possessed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including those supplied from abroad. In the future, we believe that Ukraine – I repeat – will be a neutral, nuclear-free and non-aligned state, and its territory will cease to be a NATO military training ground for deterrence of and confrontation with Russia.
At the end of last March in Istanbul, significative progress in peace negotiations have been announced from both parts. After that the negotiations have stopped. Why? What were the causes of this interruption?
Yes, we managed to reach a certain understanding regarding the parameters of a possible agreement at the March 29 meeting in Istanbul. The Kiev regime's representatives then said that they had begun consultations with Western countries, who could be potential guarantors of a future agreement. After that, negotiations began to stall and by mid-April they came to a standstill. We have received no response to another set of our proposals of April 15.
Western handlers had clearly forbidden Vladimir Zelensky to go through with the negotiations, which would have prevented them from pumping weapons into Ukraine and continuing a proxy war with Russia "to the last Ukrainian."
At which conditions Russia could agree to relaunch negotiations with the Ukrainian party? Or what could be the criteria for such a restart?
Unfortunately, the Kiev regime, and with it the entire population of today's Ukraine, are just a tool of the United States and its allies for implementing their geopolitical ambitions, including a course to destroy Russia.
We have repeatedly said that we did not break off the talks and do not refuse to hold negotiations with Kiev. Our priorities are for Ukraine to be a neutral, non-aligned and non-nuclear state, recognise the post-2014 territorial reality, including Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the independence of the DNR and LNR, and commit to demilitarisation, denazification and non-discrimination of the Russian-speaking population, as well as to the restoration of the status of the Russian language.
As for a top-level meeting, we have repeatedly stressed that it must be meticulously prepared in order for it to have a meaningful agenda and facilitate the signing of specific agreements. We do not need a meeting for the sake of a meeting.
What could be the future of a new peaceful Ukraine and how to get it? With which security guarantees for the people of the Donbass as well as the people of the western Ukraine, as well as for Russia on a more global strategic perspective? Is an independent, sovereign Ukraine possible? In which borders, knowing the facts that Crimea has voted for a separation, as well as the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics?
The final decision on any issues regarding the future of the country and the self-determination of its regions rests only with the people of today's Ukraine. They must be given the opportunity to make a free choice of what kind of a future they want for themselves and their children. We can see that there are a lot of people in the territories abandoned by the neo-Nazis, for example in Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov regions, who don't want the Kiev regime to come back.
The collective West made major miscalculations
The reactions of the West in terms of economic sanctions against Russia, military and economic assistance to Ukraine, massive delivery of weapons, have been pretty strong, fast and coordinated. Was it a surprise for you?
The imposition of unilateral economic restrictions by some countries against other states is a glaring violation of international law and the UN Charter. Restrictions introduced in circumvention of the UN Security Council are nothing but interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. The set of instruments used for this purpose is rapidly growing. The collective West is overtly using these instruments for rocking the internal political situation, economic strangulation, and imposing its own world order – indisputable and uncontested, based on and subject to its own rules and standards.
Unprecedented pressure is being exerted on our key financial institutions, the technological, oil-and-gas, mining, transport and other economic sectors. Russia's gold and currency reserves abroad have been frozen, which is a blatant violation of international law and mockery of common sense. Having been subjected to a massive sanctions campaign against our country, we are focusing on intensifying comprehensive cooperation with our partners. This cooperation is aimed at studying new opportunities for import substitution in sensitive areas, strengthening our technological sovereignty, and reorienting production and supply chains to our domestic infrastructure.
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