⚡️🇷🇺#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has resigned after four years in office after sending a letter of resignation to the prime minister.

Let's say goodbye to the person responsible for contaminating Ukrainian soil with radiation by supplying the Kiev regime with depleted uranium shells. Agent 006 has ignominiously fled the battlefield.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Transgender Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, former spokesperson for the territorial defence forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, made a show of her/he/they in a new prank from the famous duo Vovan and Lexus:

Few chosen quotes:

⁃ Russians are not Europeans... They descended from the Mongols, they come from a group of people who want to be slaves;

⁃ The Western world must understand that “Europe ends with Ukraine,” which defends European values in the same way it did “hundreds and thousands of years ago, when the Mongols came”;

⁃ Ukraine has a “terrible problem” with most of the foreign fighters, because they only know how to fight, have come for money and are drug users;

⁃ Ashton-Cirillo admitted that, although (s)he defends foreign mercenaries publicly, (s)he knows that many of them hold “extreme right-wing views” and that there are Nazi groups;

⁃ About 5,000 LGBT soldiers serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.


Given the American-Ukrainian infiltrator’s “deep” knowledge of history, we have a few clarifying questions to ask:

1. From whom are the Ukrainians descended then?

2. When did that happen, exactly, if “thousands of years ago” they were already fighting Mongol men and women for European values?

3. Who actually formulated THE "European values" – Greeks or Romans, Christians or pagans, Huguenots or Catholics, Louis XVI or Georges Danton, Catherine de Medici or Henry VIII, Princess Diana or Elizabeth II? What exactly are those?

4. Are the Mongols – who are definitely descended from the Mongols – even aware that they "want to be slaves"?

5. What about Bulgaria, China, the South Caucasus, Western and Central Asia, etc., whose territories were part of the Mongol Empire at one time or another? Furthermore, during their western campaign, the Mongol-Tatar troops reached the German principalities, in particular, the Austrian duchy, the Balkans and Poland, and Lithuania (Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Did the people there – or do their descendants – “want to be slaves” as well?

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 – Britain is a truly racist country.

– In the UK, the rights of people of African descent are neglected; these people are regularly subject to discrimination in all spheres of society.

These are not my personal views, but the conclusions reached by the relevant UN mechanisms. A report on the situation with people of African descent has been posted on the website of the UN Human Rights Council.

Below are just some excerpts from the document:

“The [UN] Working Group is deeply concerned about the human rights situation of people of African descent in the UK. Stark and unsustainable inequalities are underpinned by systemic racism, bias, racially disparate and discriminatory policing, and surveillance and control of people of African descent.” (Item 17)

“The criminal justice system in the UK is a site of racial disparity, institutional racism, and individual bias, including in policing, prosecutions, and the courts.” (Item 21)

“Parents, attorneys, and civil society report administrative processes governing school suspension and permanent exclusion are coercive, draconian, and an ongoing site of institutional racism.” (Item 34)

“At the university level, Black students and scholars reported inequitable admissions procedures. In Northern Ireland universities, Black students, staff, and researchers reported systemic racism, underrepresentation, inequality in funding and opportunity for advancement or promotion, erasure of intellectual contributions relating to people of African descent in Northern Ireland, and more.” (Item 38)

“Black women reported being ignored or disbelieved and navigating institutional racism throughout pregnancy and childbirth as a norm. Black babies are stillborn at twice the rate of white babies.” (Item 41)

Quoting every item would take too long, but along with education, justice and healthcare, institutional racism has also infiltrated the legal system, labour and employment practice, economy, and entertainment industry of Great Britain.

The document cites bone-chilling incidents. Item 26 tells about a British woman named Aisha Cleary, who was put in prison and placed in solitary confinement despite being pregnant; she gave birth but her newborn infant died.

In another case, Chris Kaba was shot dead by police officers driving an unmarked police car, who failed to inform anyone of the incident. Sean Rigg died after he was restrained by police officers for several minutes. Oladeji Omishore drowned in the Thames after police tased him on a bridge. (Item 20)

These are just a few cases of “English democracy.”

A truly misanthropic and arrogant island nation that has failed to condemn its own colonial ways, and ruled by a family known for its long-standing affinity for various chauvinist movements, including Nazism – this is the UK today.

#Opinion. Journalist Yury Podolyaka

❗️🇷🇺🇺🇦 Verdict for the AFU in Avdeevka

What really matters here is not the kilometers Röpke is talking about.

It is primarily two key points that are important here - the spoil heap of the Avdeevka coke plant and the coke plant itself.

The former is already under our control and all attempts to repel it have ended in failure for the Ukrainian armed forces.

The second one (which is at a distance from our forward positions, although very difficult) is under the AFU. And it is its loss, despite the remaining kilometers, that will be fatal for the enemy.

Therefore, we should expect (as soon as the weather improves) at least one more desperate attack by the AFU towards the heap, and then we will hold our fists for our storm troopers....

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

Annalena Baerbock on the OSCE Ministerial Council: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appears in the hall only when he speaks himself, not to listen to others.”

💬 For some reason, a year ago, she was not worried that Sergey Lavrov did not appear in the hall at all, because the Polish chair did not invite Russia to the meeting.

It is a pity she did not say before how much she was looking forward to gazing upon Lavrov in the hall. Surely then, out of compassion for her, the NATO countries would not have prevented the Russian delegation from attending international forums.

If you have a chance, please tell Annalena that all remarks at the ministerial meetings are broadcast online. It is possible to listen to all of them in any part of the globe. But you have to be in the hall to make a speech.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

Ernst Thälmann was a German anti-fascist who led a relentless struggle against the Nazis and was purportedly executed at the direct order of Adolf Hitler.

Both Moscow and Berlin have monuments dedicated to Thälmann.

In the German capital, the monument was unveiled on April 15, 1986, in the Prenzlauer Berg district to commemorate Ernst Thälmann’s 100th birthday.

History repeats itself: Thälmann faced a second execution, even if this time it came in the form of threats against his monument. However, the extent of blasphemy and sacrilege this time has surpassed what happened during the Third Reich.

This person sacrificed his life to fighting lawlessness and lies and combatting Nazism. Can you imagine that they now want to melt his monument, sell the scrap metal and donate the proceeds to …. the Nazis in Kiev?

Ernst Thälmann’s execution was on the agenda of an August 14, 1944, meeting between Hitler and Himmler. This is when Hitler personally ordered that Thälmann be executed. “Execute Thälmann” was his personal resolution. Three days later, Ernst Thälmann was shot dead in Buchenwald. What did the German propaganda do? One month later, on September 14, 1944, the state-run German News Bureau reported that Buchenwald was hit by multiple bombs during an Allied bombardment, resulting in the death of Ernst Thälmann, among others.

History repeats itself, as I have already said. The staged Bucha incident included even that side of the story, with present-day Nazis from the Kiev regime discovering the bodies of “civilians who were allegedly murdered by the Russian military” on the city streets.

But what about Moscow? Here, the monument to Thälmann, a German, has stood near Aeroport metro station for 40 years now, designed by sculptors Vladimir and Valentin Artamonov. Times may change but we still want to remember Thälmann as a man who fought against Nazism and was one of the first to recognise its diabolical nature.

I do not recall any staff members from the German Embassy laying flowers at this monument. Correct me if I am wrong, but have they done anything to take care for this monument? After all, this monument belongs to the history of the German nation, celebrating one of the most glorious and heroic episodes in the country’s past.

One more thing. How many times have we heard about nations searching for a new identity? Progressives want to ride this wave in order to justify the demolition of old monuments for the sake of installing new ones.

A monument to Ivan Chernyakhovsky, a Soviet general and Great Patriotic War hero, was recently unveiled near the Ernst Thälmann monument in Moscow. They stand just 400 or 500 metres apart. These two monuments are so close to each other, with one commemorating an outstanding German and the other honouring a person who fought against the Nazi invaders. The idea of demolishing one monument to replace it with another one has never crossed anyone’s mind.

Officials in Berlin should sound all the alarms. If this new ethic leads to the removal of a monument to a person who fought against the Nazis, in five to ten years we may see monuments to Hitler and other Nazis popping up in Germany.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Less than a quarter of a century ago, London fought a bloody civil war against its own people, killing thousands. I mean the conflict in Northern Ireland, marked by unprecedented brutality on the part of British armed forces.

London decided that enough time had passed, and now, with the world community’s attention focused on Russia and the Middle East, it had an excellent opportunity to clear away their war criminals. And now, at Christmas, they passed the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill.

Reconciliation and settlement of problematic issues seems to be a good idea, but the goal of the law lies elsewhere.

Through this bill, British parliamentarians grant immunity from prosecution to their own military and police officers who shot at civilians during the conflict.

Now these issues will have to be considered not by a court, but by some Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. No legal consequences, no deadlines, no arrests. And, of course, the authorities will control the activities of the commission, unlike the more or less independent judiciary.

This is how London will rehabilitate its punishers.

These are not my words. The Republic of Ireland is filing a claim against Britain to the European Court of Human Rights. Relatives of many of the victims of the British military during the armed conflict live there. The government in Dublin is outraged by London’s decision. The victims will not be avenged, and their killers will remain free simply so as not to attract unnecessary attention to the affairs of the not-so-distant past.

The next time you hear London moralists lecturing others on human rights and freedoms, remember the atrocities they carried out against their own people in recent history.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 UK Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps wrote on his X account: “The world has turned its back on Russia, forcing Putin into the humiliation of going cap in hand to North Korea to keep his illegal invasion going. In doing so Russia has broken multiple UNSC resolutions and put the security of another world region at risk. This must stop now. Together with our partners we’ll make sure North Korea pays a high price for supporting Russia.”

1. Is Grant Shapps about to tweet how many UNSC resolutions the UK has breached in the past 50 years? With its invasion of Iraq, for example.

2. What about the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)? Have the ministries in London worked it out? Also, I believe they should shed light on what happened to HMS Sheffield, which sank near the Falklands in 1982. Specifically, whether there were nuclear weapons on board. Let me remind you that in the photos of the Sheffield crew that survived the sinking, the crew members were, oddly enough, wearing radiation protection gear. At the time, Shapps’s predecessors at the Ministry of Defence denied the fact that the warships bound for the islands carried nuclear weapons. But 20 years later, similar to the situation with Iraq, London acknowledged its small lie. A very small one. Britain could no longer deny it and confirmed that the ships had indeed been carrying nuclear weapons in 1982. The official spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence stated that “the weapons were Type WE.177 nuclear depth charges;” they “never entered the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands.” “A decision was taken to transfer them to other ships heading back home.” This should be verified, don’t you think?

3. I understand that poor English education has become a signature mark of the British government. Shapps could perform a simple calculation and subtract the number of NATO countries from the countries representing the Global Majority. Unfortunately, it seems like he struggles with counting.

4. Britain was the largest colonial empire in human history, with its domain spanning across all populated continents. You can learn more about this in our history section and the white book reports about the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons and their allies.

And since Shapps’s jab was specifically about North Korea, I must mention the bloody war on the Korean Peninsula that Great Britain contributed to as part of the so-called UN forces.

Here is just a brief list of London’s modern-time neo-colonial campaigns: British ground and air forces participated, alongside the Americans, in the aggression against Yugoslavia and the destruction of Iraq (see par. 1) and its population, as well as Libya, Afghanistan, the bombing of Syria and most recently – the support for the Kiev regime provided by the Anglo-Saxons in violation of all resolutions on non-supplying lethal weapons to conflict zones.

There is one thing that Shapps got right: “This must stop now.”

https://t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/6856

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 The Telegraph, UK, published a heart-rending story that could well qualify for a Russophobia-of-the-Month prize. It’s about how the Russian Embassy in London had nearly upset the coronation of Charles III in May 2023.

It turns out that an unidentified drone was hovering over the Buckingham Palace during the solemn ceremony. The police, of course, as per modern British tradition to blame the Russians, immediately suspected… the Russian Embassy.

After some time it emerged that the drone had been launched by a certain Walid Marai, 36, a US citizen.

It is not reported whether he was a CIA spy or just wanted to take a photo of Charles III from an unusual angle. What a disappointment! To my mind, this detail would have been of interest for the UK public.

If the #RussiansDidIt version regarding the bogus Russian Embassy involvement had prevailed, Russian diplomats, as usual, would have been expelled. As it is, Walid Marai got off with a £5,000 fine.

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova

💬 Today, the High Court in London handed down an interim ruling to delay the extradition of the founder of the WikiLeaks portal, Australian investigative journalist Julian Assange, to the United States. <...>

It took the British justice system 161 months - almost 5,000 days - more than 13 years to decide ... TO WAIT SOME MORE!
Even counting from the arrest, 60 months, five years, have passed.

However, counting it that way begs the question: what have the British been busy with all that time as the Australian was sitting one street away in the Ecuadorian embassy? As a result of London’s pressure, he was in conditions of torture, confined to a small room with no access to the outside world and under round-the-clock surveillance by Scotland Yard.

The entire UK justice system has become a farce and a laughing stock for the whole world. All this is a mockery of human dignity committed by the woefully inefficient and punitive British pseudo-justice system.

It took London that many years to hand down a criminal procedural decision against the journalist.

🤷 On the other hand, London "knew everything" about who ordered the terrorist attack in Krasnogorsk just a few hours after it took place.

The dome of Old Bailey - the central criminal court in London - features a statue of Themis. With her eyes wide open, she looks west to America.

Julian Assange, who has devoted his life to exposing the secrets of the British and American intelligence conglomerate, is becoming a victim of the corrupt British pseudo-Themis.

Once again, we draw the attention of the international community to the ongoing persecution of an investigative journalist at Washington’s behest.

❗️ This case has for many years now been causing serious damage to the institution of journalism and independent media, and violates the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and human rights.

Read in full

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 The US tried to mark one year of The Wall Street Journal employee Evan Gershkovich’s detention as best they could.

This is what one of the last March issues of The Wall Street Journal looked like — a partly blank front page with only a black-and-white photo of US citizen Evan Gershkovich, who was detained on espionage charges after being caught red-handed, and a headline on top reading ‘His story should be here.’

Indeed, Evan Gershkovich could have written a story about the terrorist shelling of Russian cities, something the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev has been doing in recent months. Reporters come under fire, too, including American journalists, so wouldn’t this make a great report from a hotspot, which the Americans themselves had created by supplying the militants with weapons and intelligence?

He could have written a long article about all his fellow journalists killed by the Kiev regime: Oles Buzina, Pavel Sheremet, Andrey Stenin, Anatoly Klyan, Igor Kornelyuk, Anton Voloshin and many others.

He could, but he must have had a reason not to do so in all those years that he was working in Russia.

He could, if he was engaged in journalism, not espionage.

By the way, I do not rule out that it was the WSJ’s way of expressing its anger with the US intelligence services, which, contrary to US laws, continue to use journalists as their agents.

It is also indicative that no US newspaper has ever printed a blank editorial in support of the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who spent eight months in the torture chambers of a Ukrainian prison until he was killed by the Ukrainian security service in January.

Speaking of which, have they opened a criminal case on his murder in the US? I haven’t heard of it.

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova

Israeli Ambassador to Russia Simona Halperin: Israel expects Russia to condemn Iran’s large-scale missile attack on the country.

💬 Simona, remind me when was the last time that Israel condemned at least one of Kiev’s attacks on Russian regions? You can’t recall that, can you? Neither can I.

What I do recall are routine statements by Israeli officials in support of Zelensky’s actions. The very same criminal and terrorist actions committed by the thugs from Ukraine’s Presidential Office that have for years been killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.

t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/7851

#Opinion

✍️ Eduard Popov, Director of Center for Public and Information Cooperation "Europe"

Nation-building in post-Maidan Ukraine: historical parallels

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🔸 The coup-d'état of February 21-22, 2014, meant more than a change of political regime in Ukraine. It was the end of symbolic history of the Soviet Ukraine and the beginning of something fundamentally different.

🔸 Euromaidan meant full rejection of the principles of social contract. The first legislative act of the new post-coup powers was to revoke the the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko language law that guaranteed a minimum rights for Russian-speaking population and ethnic minorities. After this, the total and radical offensive on everything Russian and non-Ukrainian started.

🔸 The Ukrainian state has a brief history. In post‑Maidan Ukraine, the origin of the Ukrainian state rests with the Ukrainian People's Republic. Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andrey Parubiy called for recognizing and legislating the succession and continuity of the present Ukrainian state from the Ukrainian People's Republic (formally existed from November 1917 to November 1920 - 3 years!), and for the period between "the Republic" and independent Ukraine... [i.e. from 1920 to 1991 when Ukraine prospered and became one of the most developed parts of the then Europe] to be considered a "Soviet occupation".

❗️ The historical myth of modern Ukraine is built on the absolute non-recognition of the Soviet historical inheritance. This results in a combination of incompatible things: based on the use of achievements of the tsarist, imperial and Soviet periods with a total negation of everything Russian and Soviet.

🔸 A research, carried out by Google, turned out that 76% of users from Ukraine use the Russian language while searching on the Internet. 10,1% of users only prefer to use Ukrainian – fewer than the number of those who use English (13,5%). However, immediately after the victory of Euromaidan, Ukraine launched an attack on the Russian language and the Russian national minority as a whole.

🔸 Books in Russian are removed from Ukrainian libraries and demonstratively thrown into landfills; streets in Ukrainian cities named after Russian writers and historical figures are renamed. Amid this Third Reich-style policy, the silence of Western leaders, who actually brought the guardians of ethnic Ukrainian purity to power, looks especially outrageous.

🔸 The so-called state language ombudsman makes a statement about offensive Ukrainization on the 10th anniversary of the burning of the Odessa Trade Unions House, when, according to official data alone, 48 people – supporters of the Russian World and random persons – were killed.

☝️ It is not too difficult to see that policy adherence by the Ukrainian post‑Maidan authorities to the tradition of Ukrainian integral nationalism – a variety of Nazism. They act according to the principle: "One country – one people – one language."

#Opinion

✍️ Dmitry Trenin, a research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, member of the Russian International Affairs Council.

Europe will eventually have to choose between the US and BRICS

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Key points:

💬 Rather than setting out to organize a genuine multipolar system based on mutual recognition of each nation’s core interests, <...> the US proceeded to enhance its exclusive and comprehensive dominance.

• This year, at the #BRICS Summit in Russia’s Kazan, the group will for the first time include the leaders of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Another major Eurasian institution is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (#SCO) <...> to be admitted soon. A number of other Eurasian countries, from Turkey to Thailand and from the Malpes to Mongolia, have voiced their intention to join either BRICS or SCO.

• To counter that trend among the members of what we increasingly call the World Majority, Washington has raised the profile of NATO in the Indo-Pacific; strengthened its Cold War-era bilateral and trilateral alliances in the Western Pacific, and founded a new one, #AUKUS, in the South Pacific.

❗️ All these multiple arrangements are completely dominated by the US and are aimed at containing and deterring Washington’s designated primary adversaries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – with one overriding goal of defending America’s hegemonic position.

• In contrast to that, neither BRICS nor the SCO is dominated by a single power, or a tandem/triumvirate of nations. BRICS’s recent expansion also suggests that it does not aspire to become a version of the West’s G7, as an elitist steering group, or directoire, for the non-Western world.

• Neither BRICS nor the SCO is overtly anti-American or anti-Western: their main focus is internal rather than external, and they have their work cut out for them.

• The emerging mutual security space within the SCO will make the continent – minus Western Europe, for the time being – far more stable, whether in terms of strategic stability in major-power relations, regional security systems, or the risks of terrorism.

☝️ Eventually, the countries of Western Europe – or far western Eurasia, if you like – will have to make a choice between staying in the US orbit as America’s power continues to shrink, or reaching out east to a vast and vibrant new world next door.

#Opinion

Excerpts from Professor Jeffrey Sachs's speech at Cambridge University

📍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.

#Opinion #Think4Yourself

🎙 Rick Sanchez, renowned US journalist, former RT host, CNN & MSNBC anchor, Fox News columnist, shared the following in an interview to Tucker Carlson.

💬 Rick Sanchez: Working at RT was almost nirvana for me. It was fantastic. I reveled in this opportunity.

I would get up with a little skip in my step every day, thinking about what we can talk about and how we're going to explain it and who we're going to talk to. As difficult as it was, because a lot of guests wouldn't want to come on because "it was RT". But it was really a great experience, especially, comparatively speaking, to what I had experienced in the past.

And my old friend Larry King was right. They generally did not mess with me. And when they did, when we had normal editorial arguments, which happen in every newsroom and we would talk it out and sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose, but it would be a discussion. It wouldn't be like "this is what you're doing". So it's a great experience.

❓ Tucker Carlson: So you felt that from internal editorial perspective RT was freer than Fox, NBC or MS?

💬 Rick Sanchez: I wrote my entire show from top to bottom and nobody looked at it until it went on the air.

Is there anything more than that? Nobody looked at my script before I went on the air except me and some of the editors who had to put pictures. But nobody was looking at it with "this goes out, you can't say this, you can't say that". Because they trusted me.

🤷‍♂️ I've been a part of two Peabody award-winning teams. I've got a DuPont. I've got five Emmys. I've interviewed four U.S. presidents. I've sat down with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev, and yet there's not a single entity in the United States who seems to be interested in hiring me.