Russian Federation

Esteemed Mr. Chairman, Esteemed ladies and gentlemen,

80 years ago the most terrible war in the history of mankind ended: more than 70 million people became victims of military actions, hunger and disease. In 1945 the course of world history changed forever. The triumph over German Nazism, under whose banners the greater part of Europe had gathered, and Japanese militarism opened the path to peace, reconstruction and prosperity.

This year in Moscow and Beijing celebrations were held timed to the festive days of May 9 and September 3 in honor of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War. The world saw grandiose military parades — in commemoration of the decisive contribution of my people to the crushing of Nazi Germany and the special role of the Chinese people in the defeat of militarist Japan. We sacredly honor the memory of the brotherhood-in-arms with all the allies who at that time stood on the side of truth in the struggle against the forces of evil.

One of the enduring outcomes of that war was the creation of the United Nations. The principles of its Charter, agreed by the founding fathers of our organization, to this day serve as a bright beacon of international cooperation. They embody centuries of experience of the coexistence of states and fully retain their significance in the era of multipolarity. It remains only for all member states without exception to observe these principles — in their entirety, totality and interconnection.

In practice, however, everything looks different. Widespread gross violations of the principle of sovereign equality of states undermine faith itself in justice, leading to crises and conflicts. The root of the problems is the unceasing attempts to divide the world into "us" and "them," into "democracies" and "autocracies," into a "flourishing garden" and a "jungle," into those who are "at the table" and those who are "on the menu." Into the chosen, who are permitted everything, and the rest, who for some reason are obligated to serve the interests of the "golden billion." We stand for unconditional adherence to the principle of equality: in it lies the guarantee that all countries will be able to take their worthy place in the world order — regardless of their military might, population size, territory and economy.

The principle of non-use of force and threat of force has likewise been repeatedly trampled by the West. NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of the "US-led coalition" into Iraq, NATO's military operation for "regime change" in Libya turned into tragedies. Today the unlawful use of force by Israel against the Palestinians, aggressive actions against Iran, Qatar, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq threaten to blow up the entire Middle East.

Russia condemned the attack by Hamas militants on peaceful Israelis on October 7, 2023. However, there is no justification whatsoever for the brutal killings of the civilian population of Palestine, just as there is none for terrorist attacks. There is no justification for the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian children are dying under bombardment and from hunger, hospitals and schools are being destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people are being left homeless. There is no justification for plans to annex the West Bank of the Jordan River. In fact we are dealing with an attempt at a kind of state coup aimed at burying UN decisions on the creation of a Palestinian state. In recent days a number of Western governments have announced recognition of the state of Palestine. Moreover, they announced their intention to do so several months ago already. The question arises: why did they wait so long? Apparently, they hoped that soon there would be nothing left to recognize. The situation requires urgent action to prevent such a scenario, in favor of which the participants of the High-Level International Conference on the Question of Palestine have firmly spoken out.

The strikes on Iranian facilities under IAEA safeguards, and then on the capital of Qatar at the very moment when negotiations were being held there with Hamas, including with the participation of American mediators, deserve condemnation.

Yesterday in the Security Council the West rejected the rational proposal of China and Russia to extend the term of the 2015 agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, in order to give time to diplomacy. This finally exposed the West's course toward sabotaging the search for constructive solutions in the UN Security Council and its striving to extract unilateral concessions from Tehran through blackmail and pressure. We consider such a policy unacceptable, and all the West's manipulations to restore the anti-Iranian UN sanctions, as well as these sanctions themselves, unlawful.

The West is also not accustomed to observing the principle of non-interference in internal affairs. "Color revolutions" have become a sad phenomenon of our time, and unlawful unilateral sanctions have long since turned into the main instrument of Western diplomacy. And whatever pretexts they are justified by, the essence of such sanctions is one — to suppress and intimidate competitors in the world economy and politics.

Russia, together with the absolute majority of UN members, stands for the immediate lifting, without preconditions, of the trade blockade of Cuba, which has persisted for more than 60 years, and its removal from the notorious list of state sponsors of terrorism. We express solidarity with the people of Venezuela amid external sanctions pressure and threats. We stand for preserving Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace and cooperation.

A glaring example of the undermining of sovereignty and gross interference in internal affairs is the actions of the West in the Balkans, where such a charter principle as the necessity for all UN members to comply with Security Council decisions is also being trampled. The unilateral recognition of Kosovo's independence, contrary to resolution 1244, was essentially an encroachment on the state structure of Serbia. Now the West has taken a course toward the collapse of the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, sabotaging the Dayton Peace Agreement. Both in Kosovo and in Bosnia an assault has been launched on the vital interests of the Serbian people, including the primordial rights of Serbian Orthodoxy.

In exactly the same way, the Kyiv regime, which seized power as a result of the unconstitutional coup organized by the West in 2014, has taken a course toward the liquidation of the canonical UOC, the legislative eradication of the Russian language in all spheres — education, culture, media. Ukraine is the only country in the world that has legislatively banned the use of the native language of nearly half of its population. Arabic is not banned in Israel, nor is Hebrew in Arab countries and Iran. But Russian is banned in Ukraine. Let me recall that Article 1 of the UN Charter speaks of the necessity of "respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion."

Europe is silent about this, being obsessed with the utopian goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. For the sake of this, the Ukrainian regime is permitted everything, including terrorist attacks against politicians and journalists, torture and extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate bombardment of civilian facilities, reckless sabotage against nuclear power plants.

Russia, as President Putin has repeatedly emphasized, has been and remains open from the very beginning to negotiations on eliminating the root causes of the conflict. Russia's security, its vital interests, must be reliably guaranteed. The rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people in the territories remaining under the control of the Kyiv regime must be restored and observed in full. On this basis we are ready to discuss guarantees of security for Ukraine as well.

So far, neither Kyiv nor its European sponsors show any awareness of the gravity of the moment or readiness to negotiate honestly. The North Atlantic alliance continues its expansion right up to our borders — contrary to the assurances given even to Soviet leaders not to move "one inch" to the East. Contrary to the obligations undertaken by NATO members within the OSCE to observe the principle of the indivisibility of security, not to strengthen their own security at the expense of others, not to claim dominance.

We have repeatedly proposed to NATO capitals that they respect their obligations and agree on legally binding security guarantees. Our proposals were ignored and continue to be ignored to this day. Moreover, threats of the use of force against Russia are increasingly heard, with Russia being accused of practically planning to attack NATO and European Union countries. President Putin has more than once debunked such provocations. Russia has had and has no such intentions. However, any aggression against my country will meet a decisive rebuff. On this account there should be no doubt among those in NATO and the EU who not only convince their voters of the inevitability of war with Russia and force them to tighten their belts, but also openly declare preparations for an attack on our Kaliningrad region and other Russian territories.

We associate certain hopes with the continuation of the Russian-American dialogue, especially after the summit in Alaska. In the approaches of the current US administration we see a striving not only to facilitate the search for realistic ways to settle the Ukrainian crisis, but also a desire to develop pragmatic interaction, without adopting an ideological posture.

Russia and the United States bear special responsibility for the state of affairs in the world, for avoiding risks capable of plunging humanity into a new war. The maintenance of strategic stability is meant to be facilitated by the new initiative of the Russian Federation, put forward by President Putin on September 22, on readiness to adhere to the central quantitative limits of the START Treaty for one year after its expiration on February 5, 2026 — provided that the US acts in a similar manner and does not take steps that violate the existing balance of deterrent potentials. We believe that the implementation of our proposal will make it possible to create the conditions necessary to avoid a strategic arms race, preserve an acceptable level of predictability in the missile-nuclear sphere and improve the general atmosphere in Russian-American relations.

Esteemed colleagues,

In December of this year we will mark the 65th anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. The process of decolonization, with the Soviet Union playing the leading role, was a direct consequence of the realization of the right of nations to self-determination. The peoples of Africa and Asia refused to live under the yoke of colonizers — just as, after the 2014 coup, Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya refused to submit to the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime that had unlawfully seized power, a regime which not only does not represent the interests of their population but has unleashed war against it. In both the one case and the other, the principle enshrined in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence and subsequently repeatedly reaffirmed by American presidents was realized: "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Neither the colonizers nor the Kyiv regime had any consent of the peoples they tried to govern. This principle was unanimously reaffirmed in the 1970 UN Declaration, which states directly: everyone must respect the territorial integrity of those countries whose governments represent the entire people residing in the corresponding territory.

Today Africa and the entire Global South are experiencing a new awakening, seeking full independence, and the UN must not stand aside. In December of last year the General Assembly resolution "Eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations" was approved. We call, as a next step, for a decision to declare December 14 the International Day against Colonialism. We welcome the role of the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter in consolidating efforts to counter neocolonial and other discriminatory practices against the World Majority, and we invite all independent states to join its membership.

The existing balance of power in the world differs fundamentally from that which was established 80 years ago. The process of decolonization and other large-scale upheavals have changed the political map of the planet. The World Majority is loudly declaring its rights. The SCO and BRICS play a special role as mechanisms for coordinating the interests of the countries of the Global South and East. The influence of the AU, CELAC and other regional associations is strengthening.

These new realities have not yet found due reflection in the system of institutions of our Organization. The question of Security Council reform is especially important. Russia stands for its democratization exclusively through the expansion of representation of Asia, Africa and Latin America. We support the applications of Brazil and India for permanent "registration" in the Council, while simultaneously correcting the historical injustice toward Africa according to parameters agreed by the countries of the continent themselves.

Recently Secretary-General A. Guterres proposed a comprehensive reform of the UN. We are not opposed to an open discussion of this initiative. The guiding orientation should be the return of the UN to the foundational principles enshrined in its Charter, which the West has for many years sought to substitute with its own "rules-based order." It is important that the work be conducted transparently, with the participation and consideration of the interests of all member states. We call on the Secretary-General and all Secretariat staff to strictly follow the principles of impartiality and equidistance in accordance with Article 100 of the Charter. Attempts at a "palace coup" in the Secretariat, its privatization by a small group of countries, must not be allowed. The composition of the Secretariat must reflect the new realities, ensure fair representation of the countries of the World Majority. We count on a constructive discussion of questions of the development of the Organization at a special meeting of the Security Council, which Russia, as chair, plans to organize on UN Day, October 24 of this year.

UN reform is only part of the comprehensive task of transforming the entire system of global governance, including the genuine democratization of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO — commensurate with the weight and role of the Global South and East in the world economy, trade and finance.

In discussions of global reforms one cannot ignore the fact that the situation in the sphere of international security is worsening. I have already spoken about the causes. The main one is the striving to preserve hegemony relying on military force. More and more countries and regions are being drawn into confrontational schemes. NATO is already cramped in Europe, and it is penetrating into the Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, undermining the universal mechanisms of ASEAN and creating threats not only to the PRC and Russia, but also to other countries located in the region. NATO leadership justifies this new stage of expansion by the "indivisibility of security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific" and under this slogan attempts to place the whole of Eurasia already in a military ring.

Russia, together with like-minded countries, proposes a constructive alternative to this dangerous course: to build in Eurasia an architecture of equal and indivisible security not for NATO members and their allies, but for all countries and associations of the continent without exception, including the SCO, CIS, ASEAN, EAEU, CSTO, GCC. To this end, Belarus and Russia propose developing a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century. A genuinely continent-wide process is inevitable after the West's behavior has rendered meaningless the Euro-Atlantic model of ensuring security relying on NATO, the EU and the OSCE. We see no prospects for ideas of restoring this model in Europe in its former form, which some European capitals have begun to muse about: supposedly, let us think about it after the conclusion of the Ukrainian conflict.

Speaking of the future, one cannot forget the lessons of the past, especially in a situation where Nazism is again raising its head in Europe, and militarization is gaining momentum — under the very same anti-Russian slogans.

This is all the more alarming because a number of political figures who have found themselves in power in Brussels and in certain capitals of EU and NATO countries are seriously beginning to speak of a Third World War as a probable scenario. These figures undermine any efforts to find an honest balance of interests of all members of the international community, trying to impose their unilateral approaches on all the rest, grossly violating the key charter requirement of respect for the sovereign equality of states. It is precisely this equality that is the foundation of the objectively forming multipolarity. Russia is not agitating for revolution against anyone whomsoever. Our country has suffered from revolutions more than others. We simply call on member states and the leadership of the Secretariat to strictly follow all the principles of the UN Charter without double standards. Only then will the legacy of the founding fathers of the UN not be squandered in vain.

Thank you for your attention.