🇺🇳 On November 13, the 82nd session of the UNECE Committee on Forests and the Forest Industry (COFFI) began in Geneva.

🇷🇺 An interministerial Russian delegation is participating in the event, including representatives from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Russia, the Federal Forestry Agency (Rosleskhoz), as well as business leaders and association representatives.

🌲 The main theme of the session is "Economic Measures to Combat Deforestation". Experts will discuss common approaches to combating deforestation while ensuring the stability of timber product markets and the development of the forest industry. They will also approve recommendations for promoting sustainable forest management at the national level, including forest conservation and restoration.

ℹ️ COFFI was established in 1947 to harmonize the forest sector policies of countries in the pan-European region. Among the Committee’s central objectives are ensuring sustainable forest management that considers economic, environmental, and social factors, studying the contribution of forests to combating climate change, exchanging experience and best practices in forest management and the forest industry using an ecosystem-based approach, as well as addressing issues related to workforce training and capacity building.

❗️ The Russian Federation attaches great importance to the issues on COFFI’s agenda, as the Committee serves as an important mechanism for intergovernmental cooperation on sustainable forest use.

🤝 Russia has accumulated extensive experience in implementing large-scale projects aimed at preserving and increasing forest cover, including around cities and settlements, as well as preventing irreversible forest loss to ensure a decent quality of life for its citizens. We remain committed to continuing constructive dialogue with all interested partners.

#Opinion

Excerpts from Professor Jeffrey Sachs's speech

📍Cambridge University, October 22, 2024

💬 We are not in any intrinsic war between the US and Russia. And Russia, by the way, despite every single thing that said every single day TRULY does not want more land. It's already 11 time zones. The last thing that they need or want is more land.

The war is about completely different things than everything you and I read about in our [Western] newspapers every day, because our newspapers are telling us stories that ultimately come back to narratives conceived in the US Defense Department and the CIA, and that are completely bogus.

***

The United States? We've never been at peace. All we do is war. And you know what the truth is? We learned it from here (the UK).

Because the British Empire was the most militarized society imaginable.

And unfortunately, the leaders of this country [the UK], and it turns out not to matter which party, because Starmer is as bad as Boris Johnson, all they know is military. It's unbelievable.

What's the first thing that Starmer does when he becomes prime minister? He goes to Kiev to pledge the endless support of the US, by the way, because Britain doesn't do anything. The endless support of the United States to the defeat of Russia. And then he flies across the Atlantic to try to convince Biden to authorize, and authorize means is for the US military to enable deep strikes inside Russia.

That's really a clever (NOT!) thing to do, especially because Putin said, well, then we'd be at war with each other and we'd be forced to reconsider our nuclear strategy. <...> He's not bluffing if Russia is fundamentally threatened.

***

👉 We [the US] provoked the war in Ukraine. We provoked the war in Ukraine, absolutely surely. And we'll do the same with Taiwan and we'll lose any war that happens, but maybe the world will end also over this stupidity and the people in Washington are stupid, I'm telling you. I know them.

⚡️ Comment by Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the murder of Narodnaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Yulia Kuznetsova (November 18, 2024)

▪️On November 17, Narodnaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Yulia Kuznetsova died in the line of duty in the village of Bolshoye Soldatskoye, the Kursk Region, as a result of a targeted UAV attack launched by armed militants of the Kiev regime.

Ukrainian Nazis dropped drone-carried munitions on a vehicle loaded with the newspaper’s archives. The ensuing blast also injured an e-typesetting operator of the newspaper and an accompanying police officer.

We express our sincere condolences to Ms Kuznetsova’s family and friends. She died while performing her professional duty. We wish her wounded colleagues a rapid recovery and convalescence.

❗️ This cold-blooded murder is yet another example of the ugly and pathologically criminal nature of the Zelensky regime, which is ready to use bloody terrorist methods against civilians, civil services, and media personnel. Moreover, the Ukrainian Nazis have launched a real hunt for journalists covering frontline events. This year alone, they delivered targeted strikes that killed war correspondents Semyon Yeryomin, Valery Kozhin, and Nikita Tsitsagi, and heavily wounded Alexei Ivliyev and Yevgeny Poddubny.

🤐 This series of cruel murders and attempts on the lives of Russian journalists is a direct consequence of the connivance tactics adopted by the Western patrons of the Nazi clique in Kiev and the deliberate hushing-up of these crimes by the relevant international organisations and human rights groups.

Yet another eloquent example of this politically biased and profoundly immoral approach is the recently published draft report for 2022-2023 on media security and the impunity problem by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, a report that ignores the official Russian data on journalist deaths during that period. <...>

Likewise, this hall of shame includes cynical statements by representatives of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). They claim that the lack of response to numerous crimes against Russian journalists from the High Commissioner and various special procedures under the UN Human Rights Council is due to Russia failing to provide access for them to confirm this data. <...>

☝️ Currently, Russia’s competent authorities are carrying out an investigation to identify and bring to account, as prescribed by law, all Ukrainian militants implicated in Yulia Kuznetsova’s murder, which is classified as a terrorist attack.

We emphasise once again: all those guilty of murdering the Russian journalist will face well-deserved and unavoidable punishment.

Read in full

🎙 Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s response to a media question about alleged permission to Kiev to launch missile strikes deep into Russia

❓ Question: Western media are spreading reports that Joe Biden has allegedly given Kiev permission to launch strikes deep into Russian territory with American ATACMS missiles, and France and Great Britain to launch their SCALP and STORM SHADOW missiles. How could you comment on this?

💬 Maria Zakharova: It is yet unclear if these reports are based on official sources. One thing is clear: considering the Kiev regime’s defeats, its Western curators are betting on the maximum escalation of the hybrid war unleashed against Russia, trying to achieve an illusory goal: to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow.

However, no wonder weapon that Zelensky and his henchmen pray to get is capable to affect the course of the special military operation.

President Vladimir Putin clearly stated on October 25 what “permitting” to use of NATO high-precision long-range weapons actually means. He stressed that Ukraine cannot execute such strikes on its own without using space satellites and flight assignments provided by NATO military personnel.

Kiev’s use of long-range missiles to attack our territory would mean a direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military operations against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict.

❗️ Russia’s response would then be adequate and significant.

✍️ Russia's President Vladimir Putin approved the new Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence, signing the attendant Executive Order on November 19, 2024.

Key items:

• State policy on Nuclear Deterrence is defensive by nature, it is aimed at maintaining the nuclear forces potential at the level sufficient for nuclear deterrence, and guarantees protection of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the State, and deterrence of a potential adversary from aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.

• The Russian Federation considers nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, their use being an extreme and compelled measure, and takes all necessary efforts to reduce nuclear threat and prevent aggravation of interstate relations, that could trigger military conflicts, including nuclear ones.

• The Russian Federation ensures nuclear deterrence toward a potential adversary, which is understood to mean any individual states or military coalitions (blocs, alliances) which see the Russian Federation as a potential adversary and possess nuclear arms and/or other weapons of mass destruction or conventional forces with a significant combat capability.

• Nuclear deterrence is also ensured toward any states which provide the territory, airspace, and/or maritime space under their control as well as resources for preparing and conducting an aggression against the Russian Federation.

• An aggression of any single state from a military coalition (bloc, alliance) against the Russian Federation and/or its allies will be regarded as an aggression of the coalition (bloc, alliance) as a whole.

• An aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies of any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state will be regarded as their joint attack.

• The decision to use nuclear weapons is taken by the President of the Russian Federation.

📰 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" newspaper (November 27, 2024)

Key points:

#UkraineCrisis

• No matter what the adversary does to escalate the situation, it will never make us renounce efforts to achieve the special military operation’s goals.

• In Ukraine’s case, this deals with addressing the root causes of the conflict, which include the emergence of entrenched security threats for Russia along its western borders, including NATO’s eastward expansion, as well as recurrent and systematic violations by the Kiev regime of the rights of Russians and people identifying themselves as Russians in terms of their cultural affiliation and the Orthodox faith.

• A political settlement must include the demilitarization and de-Nazification, while also ensuring the unaligned, neutral, non-nuclear status for the territories controlled by the Kiev regime.

❗️Of course, any agreements will hinge upon recognising the political and territorial reality as per the Constitution of Russia.

#MiddleEast

• The situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate.

• All this directly stems from Israel’s aggressive, militarist policy, coupled with Washington’s efforts to monopolize the mediation process while throwing the UN Security Council decisions under the bus, despite the fact that these documents were adopted by consensus.

• Bringing the situation with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back to normal is the only path to improving the situation across the Middle East, including in Lebanon. <...> Creating conditions for achieving a two-state solution would be the next step in terms of moving beyond the violent phase in this crisis.

#NOtoNeocolonialism

• The exploitation of former colonies by the colonial powers has never stopped. All it did was merely adjust its form, but the goal has remained the same, and it is to pump out resources from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to sustain the West’s dominance and ensure high living standards for its people.

• The developing countries keep raising the issue of their rightful spot in the global division of labour, which, in its current form, is a stark manifestation of modern neocolonialism in and of itself.

#ClimateAgenda

• Our priority during these discussions is to depoliticize cooperation on climate issues. Our goals in this sphere should be realistic, and their implementation should promote a balanced socio-economic development of all countries.

• We regard the task of energy transition in the context of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern sources of energy. The key role in this process belongs to natural gas, the cleanest hydrocarbon and an ideal transition fuel.

• We consistently protest against the accelerated green transformation, which Western countries are advocating. Their fixation on that subject has already caused an unjustified growth of energy prices and, consequently, unprecedentedly high prices of mineral fertilisers.

👉 Read the interview in full