🎙 Excerpt from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a meeting with university graduates entering the Russian diplomatic service (Moscow, October 20, 2026)

💬 Sergey Lavrov: One of the lessons bequeathed to us by the founding fathers of the UN is to prevent the revival of the Nazism they defeated.

It seemed that this task had long been accomplished and everyone had repented… But no! The metastases are spreading very quickly. To a large extent, this was used as a political instrument by bringing a Nazi regime to power in Ukraine.

Ursula von der Leyen and others now say they “must stand with Ukraine as long as it takes” because it “defends European values”.

This means that “European values” include a blanket ban on the Russian language in education, the media, culture and even everyday life. A legislative ban on an entire language – an official language of the UN. In fact, practically everyone there still speaks it, even those imposing the ban.

☝️ This hypocrisy shows only that these bans are intended not to eradicate the Russian language (no one could seriously expect to achieve that), but to undermine Russia’s interests as much as possible and divide the Russian World.

There is no other country where an entire language is banned.

On October 19, at a press conference in Tehran, I was asked to what extent the Ukraine conflict involves ideological and religious motives. I replied that banning a language is unprecedented, and that the West’s silence – indeed, it is not even keeping silent, but calling Ukrainians “defenders of European values” – is very telling.

👉 In Iran, where I spoke at a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Hebrew is not banned: the Jewish community is thriving and synagogues are open. In Israel, neither Arabic nor Farsi is banned. There are many such examples.

So the West’s indulgence of and cover for this policy pursued by Kiev is very telling.

This is to say nothing of the de facto ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the creation some ten years ago of a quasi-church structure called the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, and attempts to forcibly close churches belonging to the canonical Church. They have not succeeded in everything, but the West encourages this.

Nor have I mentioned the torchlight marches, including those in present-day Kiev, Lvov and other cities (which you have surely seen), Nazi symbols, or the reburial of the remains of criminals – Banderite executioners – on the sacred grounds of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. They announce the opening of a “pantheon of heroes”.

❗️ Zelensky kneels before the remains of this filth, and the West applauds.

I see no sign that the West disapproves. On the contrary, militarist sentiments are resurging in Germany, Italy and Japan.

Finland, which was our neighbour (and, we thought, a friend), changed immediately as soon as the pendulum swung the other way. All those underlying instincts resurfaced – the same ones that once made the Finns, like most other European countries, Hitler’s accomplices and participants in the siege of Leningrad, and so on. This task will therefore remain a priority for our foreign policy.

🕯 2026 marked the first observance of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, established by Federal Law No. 523-FZ of December 29, 2025. We will work to ensure that this issue is not merely raised at international forums, but receives the broadest possible international recognition.

The Russian MFA will take this new factor into account in its work to prevent the revival of Nazi ideology.

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