📺 Watch Ambassador Andrei Kelin's interview with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One (20 October 2024)

Skripal case

• We have put enormous amount of questions to the investigators. None of them have been answered at all, and we still expect that we will have a contact with the Skripals because they are Russian citizens. We have asked many times, both formally and informally, that we should talk to these people in order to establish the truth. But so far we have no answer.

• [The Salisbury provocation] was a big case, which was initially staged to drive a wedge in relations between Russia and the UK.

Ukraine conflict

• The British government is waging an aggressive war against Russia by the hands of the Ukrainians. This is a proxy war led by the United Kingdom's government by providing lethal weapons [to Ukraine] with which it is killing Russian soldiers and civilians.

• What worries us is that there is no [actual] peace plan in the "peace plan" presented by Zelensky. He does not want peace talks. He keeps asking for more and more: NATO [membership], European Union assistance, defence packages, anything, but nothing about negotiations at all.

US elections

• For us, it doesn't make any difference whether it's Democrats or Republicans, because there is a bipartisan consensus on the issue of Russia, and that is anti-Russian sentiment, anti-Russian position. They continue to state that Russia should be strategically defeated.

Russia's nuclear doctrine

• We are changing our doctrine. It is connected to the discussion in the West [about an option to allow Kiev to use western long-range missiles to strike deep into the Russian territory]. The targeting, the flight plan, the information from the satellites and the launch itself can only be done by the UK specialists if we are talking about these missiles supplied to Kiev by the UK. In this case the UK will be an accomplice of the Ukrainian forces. And we have to reconsider this situation. And, of course, some measures will be prepared.

Russia-UK relations

• We have a 450-year history of relations. And if the UK government has taken a wrong position, sooner or later they will acknowledge that this is the position of a loser. When they realise that they are losing this case [in Ukraine] and it was wrong, then perhaps there will come a time when we will have a discussion.

• We didn't start it. We didn't start to spoil our relationship, to cut off all the ties that bind us. So, the initiative is on the side of the British government.

Watch the interview in full on our YouTube channel

🎙 President Vladimir Putin answered questions from the heads of leading BRICS media agencies ahead of the upcoming BRICS Summit in Kazan.

Key talking points:

🔸 What sets BRICS apart from many other international organisations? BRICS was never meant to be created in opposition to anyone. BRICS does not set itself in opposition to anyone. It is a group of countries that work together, guided by shared values, a common vision for development, and, most importantly, by the consideration of each other’s interests.

🔸 Around 30 countries have expressed interest in cooperating with BRICS in some form or participating in its activities. This is a clear and visible impact of our recent expansion. We will not turn anyone away. The doors are wide open.

🔸 Amidst all the active conflicts in the world today, the advancement of BRICS will have a beneficial effect on the global developments, if it develops based on non-confrontation and cooperation solely in the interests of the group countries.

🔸 The US ruined relations with Russia, constantly impose sanctions and this, eventually, negatively affects the US and the US dollar. The whole world started contemplating whether US dollars should be used since the United States, for political reasons, restricts the use of the US dollar as a universal international payment unit.

🔸 We did not decide to stop using the US dollar as universal currency, we were denied using it. Now, 95% of Russia’s foreign trade with its partners is being carried out in national currencies. The West thought everything would collapse. No, it did not. Trade is developing on a new foundation.

🔸 In the modern world, creating nuclear weapons is not a difficult task. I do not know whether Ukraine is capable of doing this now though. I can say straight away: under no circumstances will Russia allow this to happen.

🔸 We are ready for a dialogue on a peace settlement to the Ukraine conflict, but only based on the document that was developed during the thorough talks that took several months in 2022 and were initialled by the Ukrainian side. We are interested in settling it as soon as possible and by peaceful means like no one else. It was not us who broke off the talks; it was the Ukrainian side saying that it would not continue negotiations with Russia.

🔸 NATO is fighting us, but they are fighting this proxy war using Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine does not spare its soldiers in the interests of third states. <...> NATO doesn’t care about Ukrainians: they are not its soldiers. It serves the interests of the United States, and in this sense the US doesn’t care either.

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💬 Ambassador Andrei Kelin: There are two things that must be done. One is that Ukraine should remain a neutral and non-nuclear country in accordance with its Constitution.

And the second thing, which is not talked about very much, is that human rights should be fully restored in Ukraine. I mean the human rights of other nations: Russians, Hungarians, Romanians, all those who live there. All these laws that discriminate against them should be abolished. <...>

We are in favour of the speediest negotiated political solution in Ukraine. But we do not see any reciprocity. No one — neither the Ukrainian president, nor his government, nor any of the NATO leaders — is talking about negotiations. <...>

What do you want? That we will end it unilaterally? No, that is not going to happen.

☝️ We want to settle this conflict forever and on normal terms. The terms that will provide Europe, Russia and Ukraine with normal security guarantees.

Watch the full interview on YouTube

🎙 Excerpt from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview to Argumenty i Fakty newspaper (Moscow, 21 October 2024)

❓ Question: In recent days, the Western media have been actively discussing Boris Johnson’s new memoir, with most of them quoting one paragraph where he complains that you deliberately seated him near a fireplace to make him sweat profusely.

💬 Sergey Lavrov: He is an eccentric. The line you quoted fits well with his eccentric image.

He was a guest of honour in our lounge, where we entertain our colleagues when they come for talks. The chair he was invited to sit in is used by all our guests. It was wintertime. The Foreign Ministry Mansion in Spiridonovka has a fireplace. Everyone loves it. It was lit, not just for the sake of warmth – although the room is large, and it may be chilly in winter, but also to make the room cozier and create a trustful atmosphere for conversation.

I was sitting two metres away from him across the table. I remember perfectly well that he was not sweating. There were no beads of sweat on his face that he mentions. To reiterate, Boris Johnson is known for his sometimes unconventional behaviour.

On the other hand, what he says is not necessarily true. As we say, he wouldn’t scruple to tell a lie.

I have a different quote though. I even wrote it down to avoid quoting him incorrectly. When he got off the matter of the fireplace and his physiological responses and returned to politics, he let slip that he denies responsibility for derailing the Istanbul talks [between Russia and Ukraine] in April 2022.

Although this fact had been confirmed by Ukraine’s chief negotiator, David Arakhamia, who initialed the final document. He still heads Vladimir Zelensky’s party group in the Verkhovna Rada.

To prove that he had nothing to do with it, Boris Johnson wrote, verbatim: "The Ukrainians were never going to agree to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's terms", referring to the Istanbul story.

☝️ But President Vladimir Putin's terms were not announced in Istanbul. The Ukrainian delegation brought its own document, which we agreed to use as a backbone draft.

As to the blatant lie that Vladimir Putin insisted on something the Ukrainians did not agree to – I will leave this on Boris Johnson’s conscience.

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🎙 Excerpt from Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova's weekly briefing on topical foreign policy issues (16 October 2024)

Caribbean nations' demands for slavery reparations from the UK

💬 On 25-26 October, Samoa will host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The outcomes of this summit may entail most unpleasant consequences for London, including in terms of finances: 15 member states of the CARICOM trade and economic association, once the plantation and slave-trading centres of the British Empire, intend to demand from London reparations of at least $260 billion for centuries of slavery. This amount is by no means final and could be significantly increased. If the Commonwealth summit meets with a refusal, CARICOM members intend to file a lawsuit with international judicial authorities.

The idea of seeking reparations from the former mother country for centuries of colonial exploitation and slavery, which have been the main cause of socio-economic problems and dire poverty until now, have been discussed already for a long time. But now, thanks to just and persistent demands from the Caribbean states, appeals for compensation are beginning to take shape.

❗️ Britain did not intervene in the affairs of only 22 countries out of 193 UN-recognised states.

The expansion of the British Empire was geographically the most extensive among other Western European states, covering almost all regions of the world. By seizing rich countries and territories, the British then siphoned off resources and used these countries as raw material appendages and markets for their manufactured goods and as a way to replenish slave markets.

10 non-self-governing territories still remain the British colonial dependencies now. Using the UN classification, some of them are in the Caribbean (Anguilla, Bermuda, British and Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands).

The brutality of the British colonising policy was well known in its own time, and has been put on record and well documented as well. Britain’s colonial machine literally ground up millions of lives on different continents. We have every reason to talk about the British being responsible for the genocide around the world.

In a cowardly attempt to evade responsibility for the crimes of the past, London is now purposefully working to destroy archives in order to obstruct the efforts to assess the scale of its crimes and criminal acts. At the same time, with the prodding of the elites, the colonial period has largely remained a factor of national pride for British society.

☝️ London cannot continue suppressing independence and sovereignty of the peoples indefinitely. Russia supports the Caribbean nations in their pursuit of a fair compensation from Britain for the past and present grievous consequences caused by colonisation and neo-colonialism.

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🤝 Congratulations to British independent journalist Graham Phillips on officially obtaining asylum in Russia.

He had to apply for it while being extrajudicially sanctioned by his own UK Government for telling the truth about crimes of the Kiev regime in Donbass in an act of gross violation of freedom of speech.

He was thus left in legal limbo, cut off from his funds in Britain and effectively prevented from travelling to his home country that he never wanted to abandon in the first place.

Now, Graham Phillips can persevere in his brave journalistic mission without feeling almost stateless. We wish him the best of luck in this noble endeavour.

📹 © Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs