🎙 Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's statement on the 80th anniversary of the International Court of Justice (April 17, 2026)

💬 On April 18, 1946, the International Court of Justice – the principal judicial organ of the UN and the highest body of international justice – held its first public hearing.

It was established by the UN Charter to fulfil the key task of ensuring that international disputes are resolved by peaceful means. Operating on the strict principle of voluntary consent to jurisdiction, for 80 years the Court has ruled on landmark cases, profoundly shaping our understanding of international law.

Our country has a long history of cooperation with the International Court of Justice. On August 20, 1945, the Soviet Union was among the first states to ratify the Court’s Statute, alongside the UN Charter.

☝️ Unfortunately, the Court has recently become the arena of a “legal war”.

Its jurisdiction is being blatantly abused to bring patently absurd claims against Russia. Other countries in the #MultipolarWorld, including our closest allies, have also come under attack.

In an effort to force the Court into making anti-Russia rulings, Western countries are interfering en masse in proceedings. In the Russian-Ukrainian case under the Genocide Convention, 33 states have declared their accession, ostensibly as neutral “third parties”, but in reality, on Kiev’s side. This practice is flawed and has even forced the Court to change its own rules.

👉 Attempts to pressure the Court have failed.

False accusations against the Russian Federation of alleged “state terrorism”, “financing terrorism,” “racial discrimination”, and violation of the Genocide Convention have been rejected by the Court.

On the contrary, the Court explicitly recognised that the DPR and LPR were not “terrorist organisations” thereby delegitimizing Kiev’s so-called “anti-terrorist operation” against the people of Donbass. In the Genocide Convention case, Ukraine itself ended up in the dock for the genocide committed in Donbass by the Kiev regime and its Nazi henchmen.

***

It is in the interests of all states to have an independent, fair, and impartial body for resolving international disputes.

We hope that the International Court of Justice will maintain its objectivity, withstand the pressure being placed upon it, and remain an effective mechanism for resolving disagreements – unlike the politicised organisations that have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Fair justice, equal for all, is an essential component of long-term, lasting peace and stability on our planet.

Read in full

🤝 За 11 лет функционирования ЕАЭС экспорт сельхозтоваров и продовольствия увеличился в 1,9 раза, взаимная торговля в 2,1 раза

Об этом заявила член Коллегии по промышленности и агропромышленному комплексу ЕЭК Гоар Барсегян в рамках совещания министров сельского хозяйства стран ШОС.

📊 «Рост производства сельхозпродукции составил 130,8%. Союз полностью покрывает внутренние потребности в зерне, растительных маслах, свинине, мясе птицы, сахаре и яйцах», – добавила она.

📷: фонд Росконгресс

#ЕАЭС
#сельхоз

🎙 Интервью Директора Консульского департамента МИД России А.В.Климова ТАСС (15 апреля 2026 года)

Ключевые тезисы:

• Хотелось бы призвать сограждан ответственно подходить к вопросам планирования своего пребывания за рубежом, в особенности в тех регионах, где отмечаются признаки возможной эскалации напряжённости.

• Если вы всё-таки оказались в зоне военного конфликта, то следует придерживаться простых правил:

– встать на консульский учёт в российских загранучреждениях, иметь под рукой номера телефонов экстренной связи;
– руководствоваться рекомендациями, публикуемыми на официальных информационных ресурсах МИД России и его загранучреждений, органов власти страны пребывания;
– иметь при себе полный комплект личных документов (паспорта, свидетельства о рождении детей и т.д.) и запас наличных денежных средств;
– избегать мест массового скопления людей;
– не приближаться к военным объектам, госучреждениям и элементам критической инфраструктуры, таким как нефтехранилища, электростанции, станции опреснения воды и т.д.;
– воздержаться от фото- и видеосъёмки, использования оптических приборов в районах расположения подобных объектов, не распространять материалы о результатах ракетных ударов и работе средств противовоздушной обороны;
– при объявлении воздушной тревоги немедленно направляться в ближайшее укрытие (бомбоубежище, комнату безопасности в гостинице, подземный паркинг и т.д.);
– по возможности покинуть страну регулярным рейсом, при этом до вылета систематически отслеживать его статус и уведомления авиакомпаний, быть готовыми к отмене и задержке вылета, заранее продумать альтернативные маршруты.

• Наши загранучреждения готовы прилагать все возможные усилия для защиты прав и законных интересов граждан за рубежом, однако требовать для себя в текущей напряженной обстановке в регионе эксклюзивного индивидуального подхода по меньшей мере несправедливо по отношению к другим соотечественникам, оказавшимся в такой же сложной ситуации.

ℹ️ Целесообразно заблаговременно изучить информацию и рекомендации, размещаемые на официальных ресурсах страны посещения и МИД России, в том числе канале Консульского департамента в национальном мессенджере МАХ, установить на телефон и зарегистрироваться в мобильном приложении «Помощник за рубежом».

• По имеющимся в нашем распоряжении данным, из затронутых конфликтом стран [Ближневосточного] региона на Родину вернулись практически все желающие – более 60 тыс. человек.

• Работа посольств и консульских учреждений России в государствах региона не прекращается. Большинство из них в связи с беспрецедентным количеством обращений соотечественников функционирует в усиленном режиме, продолжается приём граждан и оказание им консульских услуг.

• Несмотря на сложную обстановку, власти стран региона чутко отреагировали на наши просьбы, связанные с оказанием помощи российским гражданам, оказавшимся в этот непростой период на их территории. Значительную помощь в эвакуации наших соотечественников из Ирана оказали Армения и Азербайджан.

🤝 Мы искренне признательны всем нашим партнёрам в регионе за помощь и внимание к российским гражданам.

Читать полностью

🗓 On April 17, the 9th meeting of the Foreign Ministers in the Russia-Central Asia format took place in Moscow.

The meeting was attended by:

🇷🇺 Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov,
🇰🇿 Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Yermek Kosherbayev,
🇰🇬 Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan Jeenbek Kulubaev,
🇹🇯 Foreign Minister of Tajikistan Sirojiddin Muhriddin,
🇺🇿 Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Bakhtiyor Saidov,
🇹🇲 and Deputy Foreign Minister of Turkmenistan Ahmet Gurbanov.

In a traditionally friendly and constructive atmosphere, the parties discussed the implementation of the agreements reached at the second Central Asia–Russia Summit held on October 9, 2025, in Dushanbe, including the large-scale initiatives put forward at the summit. They reviewed the progress in establishing six-party working groups and coordinating sector-specific roadmaps for implementing the Joint Action Plan in such spheres as the economy, energy, transport, healthcare, culture, education, and environmental protection.

The participants reaffirmed their shared commitment to consistent joint efforts aimed at steadily advancing the comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and the Central Asian states. Particular focus was placed on key areas of cooperation, including the economy, energy, environmental issues, and regional security. The high level of interaction among the six countries within the frameworks of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was also highlighted.

The participants held a substantive discussion on current international issues in the context of the unprecedented escalation of tensions in the Middle East and around Iran.

The meeting marked an important stage in the collective implementation of the decisions adopted by the six heads of state on October 9, 2025. It provided significant impetus for coordination among relevant government agencies and outlined avenues for deepening cooperation between Russia and the Central Asian countries on the global stage.

🎙 Video address by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the occasion of Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by Nazis and their accomplices during 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War (Moscow, April 19, 2026)

💬 Friends,

This year will be the first time that we mark a mournful date, namely, Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. This new commemorative day - April 19 - was established in December 2025. Events in memory of the victims of Nazis and the immortal feat of the Soviet people will take place at Russian missions abroad as well.

April 19 was chosen for a reason. On that day in 1943, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet “On measures of punishment for German Nazi perpetrators guilty of killings and torture of Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens, and for their accomplices” was issued.

The decree became the first document to provide a legal qualification of the systematic policy pursued by the Nazis and collaborationists to exterminate the civilian population, and laid the groundwork for bringing them to justice. Among the first trials subsequently organised against German war criminals were the Krasnodar and Kharkov trials. Their outcomes significantly influenced the work of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal.

The evidence presented in the materials of the Nuremberg Tribunal and their legal assessments made it possible to speak of genocide of peoples in the territories occupied by Germany, primarily the territory of the USSR. The enemy was open about it waging a war of extermination against our Fatherland. As early as September 16, 1941, by order of the Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, German troops were instructed to show no mercy to civilians. The atrocities reached an unprecedented scale.

▪️ The total number of civilian victims in the USSR during the occupation amounted to around 14 million people.

These crimes have no statute of limitations.

The outcomes of the Nuremberg Tribunal laid the foundation for drafting the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The very term “genocide” gained currency in 1944 to define a policy of obliteration of national, racial, and religious groups.

The facts of genocide in the occupied territories of the former USSR have been confirmed in court in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation where, during the Great Patriotic War, crimes against the civilian population were committed by German Nazis and their accomplices from among those in other countries who stood under Nazi banners. Russian diplomacy will seek recognition by the international community of the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against citizens of the Soviet Union as genocide of the Soviet people. The qualification to this end has been enshrined in a number of documents adopted within the CIS and the CSTO.

In Russia, rehabilitation of Nazism, including actions that desecrate the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide, has been criminalised.

We will continue to resolutely defend historical truth and counter attempts to whitewash Nazi criminals and their acolytes, and to revise the internationally recognised outcomes of the Second World War. The majority of states stand in solidarity with us. There is clear broad support for Russian thematic initiatives, primarily at the UN, where Russian draft resolutions on combatting the glorification of Nazism are adopted annually.

Preserving the memory of millions of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people is our sacred duty.

We will not allow these atrocities to be consigned to oblivion, no matter how hard those who today seek once again to steer Europe down the well-trodden path of racial superiority may try.

◼️ Today our country marks for the first time Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

It was established b the Executive Order of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin of December 29, 2025, and the basic details of commemorating the genocide victims were determined by Federal Law No. 74-FZ. The date of 19 April was not chosen by chance. On this day in 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued its Decree No. 39

#NoStatuteOfLimitations

The genocide of the Soviet people means the actions committed in 1941-45 with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, ethnic, racial and national groups that inhabited the USSR.

The top echelon of Nazi Germany regarded the territory of the Soviet Union up to the Urals as its Lebensraum, which historically was intended to be settled with representatives of the Aryan race and, therefore to be cleansed from those, whom the Hitlerite elite labeled as “subhumans”: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and Asians.

With these purposes in view, even before invading the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany planned a system of extermination practices to radically reduce the Soviet population as early as during the war.

The orchestrated famine strategy was an important part of the Nazi genocide programme (https://t.me/MID_Russia/77695) that was to lead to the death of 30 million Soviet citizens as early as in the winter of 1941-42.

▪️ Although it has not been implemented in full, it still caused enormous victims, including: among those who died were over three million Soviet prisoners of war, about a million of residents in the besieged Leningrad, a great number of civilian population starving in the occupied areas, women and children forcefully imprisoned in the Nazi transfer camps.

▪️ Jews and Gypsies were subject to total extermination.

▪️ Soviet female labourers (Ostarbeiter) were subject to forced abortions.

▪️ Soviet children having signs of Aryan origin were kidnapped in the occupied territories for subsequent Germanisation, which also constitutes a conventional form of genocide.

From the very beginning of the war, the Nazis developed the so-called General Plan ‘Ost’ with the aim of colonising the occupied territories. Under the plan, millions of Germans were to be resettled in the conquered lands. New, German towns and villages were to be built for them.

***

A horrifying estimate of 13.7 million people fell victim to the Hitler’s policy of destroying “subnormal” as he thought Soviet people, with another five million citizens to a willfully implemented famine strategy.

The facts of genocide in the occupied lands of former USSR have been confirmed judicially in all the constituent entities of Russia, where Nazis and their collaborators committed crimes against civilian population during the Great Patriotic War.

❗️ Russia’s diplomatic service will seek to ensure that the crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators against the citizens of the Soviet Union are recognised by the international community as genocide against the Soviet people. The relevant qualification has been recorded in some documents adopted in the CIS and the CSTO.

💬 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the video address on Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People:

Preserving the memory of the millions of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people is our sacred duty. We will not allow those atrocities to be lost to oblivion, no matter how hard those who today seek once again to push Europe down the well-trodden path of racial superiority may try.

For further perusal:

👉 On the Nazi's genocide of millions of Soviet citizens

👉 Archival documents on heinous Nazi crimes in the concentration camps

👉 On the Khatyn' massacre

👉 How the West created and supported Ukrainian Nazi collaborators complicit in the genocide

👉 Section on the genocide of the Soviet people on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website (in Russian)

🗓 On April 19, 1783, Russia's Empress Catherine II the Great signed the Imperial Manifesto on the Accession of Crimea, Taman and Kuban into the Russian Empire. In accordance with Federal Law No. 336-FZ of August 3, 2018, this day was declared a commemorative date in Russian history.

Russia’s victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 brought an end to Ottoman rule in the northern parts of the Black Sea region, as enshrined in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. By 1783, Crimea, Taman and the right bank of the Kuban River had become part of the Russian Empire.

📜 In the Manifesto, the Empress assured her new subjects:

“...We promise, sacredly and unwaveringly, for ourselves and the successors to our throne, to maintain them on an equal footing with our natural subjects, to protect and defend their persons, property, churches and their native faith, the free practice of which, with all lawful rites, shall remain inviolable; and to grant them, ultimately, all the rights and privileges enjoyed by those in Russia...”

The accession of Crimea to Russia gave a powerful impetus to the region’s development: the economy, trade and culture grew rapidly, and the cultivation of vast fertile lands began. In a very short time, new cities and ports emerged on the Black Sea steppe, and the Russian fleet firmly established itself in the Black Sea, securing our southern borders and opening up new opportunities for the country’s development.

Prince Grigory Potemkin, appointed Governor-General of Novorossiya by Catherine II, played a key role in the incorporation and development of the Crimean Peninsula. In June 1783, on the flat summit of Mount Ak-Kaya, he accepted the oath of allegiance to Russia from the Crimean nobility and representatives of all segments of the Crimean population.

On December 28, 1783, Sultan Abdul Hamid I of the Ottoman Empire formally recognised Russia’s authority over Crimea in writing. That was a remarkable diplomatic achievement for Russian Ambassador Yakov Bulgakov. “Your firmness, energy and intelligence have averted war,” Prince Potemkin wrote to Bulgakov. The Sublime Porte could not forgive that: from 1787 to 1789, the Russian diplomat was imprisoned in the Yedikule Fortress.

The outcome of the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1791 and the Treaty of Jassy sealed the deal: Crimea is Russia.

💬 From a briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova:

“The Manifesto represented the logical culmination of our country’s centuries-long struggle for the return of primordially Russian lands, ensured the security of its frontiers, and cemented the legitimate incorporation of the Crimean Peninsula and other territories into Russia.”

At the same time, Crimea’s incorporation into the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great had deep historical roots. As early as the second half of the 10th century, the eastern part of the peninsula became part of the Tmutarakan Principality, thus becoming part of Ancient Rus.

Ties were strengthened after Grand Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich’s successful campaign in 988 against the Byzantine city of Korsun (Tauric Chersonesos). It was there that he was baptised, defining the historical path of our Fatherland.

Several centuries later, in 1783, Crimea rejoined the Russian Empire – and in 2014, following a Crimean referendum, it finally returned “to its native harbour,” becoming an integral part of the Russian Federation. The peninsula’s return was a logical continuation of the shared historical journey of Crimea and Russia – a journey spanning over a thousand years.

🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks during the 9th Ministerial Meeting of Russia and Central Asia (Moscow, April 17, 2026)

💬 Sergey Lavrov: I am pleased to welcome you to Moscow. We began our joint work yesterday at the CIS Foreign Ministers Council, and today we are holding the ninth meeting of Foreign Ministers of Russia and Central Asia. This in itself underscores the relevance of this six-party dialogue mechanism. In our view, it is developing successfully and dynamically, to the benefit of all participants.

In October 2025, the Second Russia – Central Asia Summit was held in the welcoming city of Dushanbe. During the summit, our leaders approved a Joint Action Plan for 2025-2027 and put forward a number of important initiatives. Our task now is to translate these decisions into concrete steps. The Action Plan serves as a framework document, outlining the key areas of our cooperation: trade, economic and investment ties, transport, energy, healthcare, environmental protection, security, cultural and humanitarian engagement, and migration.

Specific projects and initiatives are currently being developed within the six-party working groups established by the relevant agencies of Russia and your countries. As we noted today during the #CIS meeting, our relations are grounded in equality, mutual respect, and careful consideration of each other’s interests. They truly deserve the highest recognition as an example of a modern and forward-looking model of international partnership.

Our leaders maintain close and regular communication, both bilaterally and within integration frameworks such as the #CIS, the #EAEU, the #CSTO, and the #SCO. Active contacts are also sustained among heads of government, deputy prime ministers, and the leadership of parliaments, ministries, and agencies.

Despite the current geopolitical turbulence – which we examined in detail during today’s CIS meetings – we have succeeded in maintaining a consistently high level of trade turnover. In 2025, it continued to grow, approaching the $50 billion mark.

As I have already noted, cultural and humanitarian cooperation continues to develop. Through our joint efforts, and at the initiative of President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the International Organisation of the Russian Language was established. The Russian language remains a key means of communication not only between Russia and the Central Asian states, but also among the peoples of the broader post-Soviet space. Our approaches to international issues are closely aligned and, in most cases, coincide.

We greatly appreciate that, despite unprecedented external pressure, the Central Asian countries remain committed to their allied obligations, thereby contributing to the dynamic development of our friendly and mutually beneficial relations, both bilaterally and within multilateral frameworks, including the Russia – Central Asia mechanism.

I hope that today we will be able to make a tangible contribution to the implementation of the decisions adopted at the second Russia – Central Asia Summit in Dushanbe.