🎙 Interview by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with RBC TV (Moscow, August 28, 2026)

Key points:

• The world is undergoing a transformation, profound changes. These changes will most likely span an entire era, so the generation currently living on Earth may not necessarily see the final configuration that emerges.

• After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the West always had the idea of “keeping Russia close” – but not as an equal partner. Even when we triumphantly joined the G8, which later reverted to the G7, our membership was never fully equal.

• The turning point in our attitude, when we finally understood and became convinced that the West had no intention of cooperating with us on an equal footing, was President Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech in 2007. Everyone knows it very well.

• As President Vladimir Putin has already said, we will always be ready for dialogue, but we have learned our lessons, and our relations with the West will never again be what they were before February 2022.

• The recent visits to Moscow by the Vatican’s top diplomat and the CIA Director reflected the desire of those who came here to visit and talk.

• I held talks with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations of the Holy See. There was nothing secret about our meeting. We spoke about virtually everything at the subsequent press conference.

• Like everywhere else in the world, Russia has established rules governing interaction between intelligence services. There is nothing unusual about this. Nor is there anything unusual about such work being conducted discreetly.

• Much of diplomacy, too, takes place behind the scenes, but diplomats, by tradition and by the very nature of their profession, are expected to say something publicly. Naturally, we do not disclose details that are particularly sensitive or still being worked out, where it is important not to jeopardise possible compromises or consensus.

• The Zelensky regime shells schools, children’s centres, beaches and passenger buses – a vast number of facilities that have nothing whatsoever to do with military capabilities. And the West keeps shamefully silent. Regrettably, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk are equally silent. ☝️ They have unequivocally and firmly sided with the Ukrainian regime.

• Geopolitically and geoeconomically, giants such as China, India and Brazil are asserting themselves and rapidly strengthening their economic standing, taking their rightful place in global economic affairs.

• Fundamental changes are taking place in Africa as the continent begins moving away from the neocolonial model under which raw materials were extracted there while value was added in Europe.

Read in full

⚡️ Report by the Russian Foreign Ministry – “On the Kiev Regime’s Unlawful Actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Its Clergy and Parishioners” (as of June 2026)

📄 FULL REPORT (PDF)

❗️ The Kiev nationalists, who seized power in 2014 through an unconstitutional armed coup, have since systematically built a multi-layered system of severe restrictions on religious freedom, turning the religious sphere into a testing ground for assaults on human dignity.

The religious dimension has become one of the state’s key instruments for influencing social processes and is actively used to falsify history, legitimise and glorify Nazism, and suppress dissent, as well as secular and religious opposition.

Mass violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms have become a defining feature of the Kiev regime’s years in power.

***

👉 Zelensky and his entourage are fragmenting the country’s religious landscape, shaping relations with religious organisations and believers according to the degree of their tolerance for the misanthropic ideology imposed by the authorities.

Within this framework, sweeping administrative and legal measures are being implemented to weaken the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (#UOC) to the greatest possible extent in public life, up to and including the dismantling of its governing structures.

The report provides numerous documented examples of discrimination, along with public statements by Ukrainian officials at various levels openly spelling out the ultimate objectives of this campaign – to eliminate the country’s largest religious organisation, force its parishioners and clergy to join the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, which is controlled by the authorities and interested business circles, and expropriate UOC property, religious objects and holy sites.

The report’s sections cover:

• Ukraine’s discriminatory laws targeting the UOC
• Unlawful actions by Ukrainian special services and law enforcement agencies against the UOC
• Illegal mobilisation of UOC clergy
• Actions by Ukrainian local authorities and self-government bodies against the UOK
• Seizures of UOC churches and illegal re-registration of communities
• Pressure exerted by national and regional authorities on major UOC monasteries
• Hate speech, unprovoked aggression and violence against UOC clergy and believers
• US influence on the evolution of the church crisis in Ukraine
• Response of the international community

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The controlled chaos created by the Kiev regime within Ukrainian Orthodoxy has for years enabled the authorities, the OCU and radical groups to carry out forcible seizures of monasteries and churches, illegally re-register religious communities, cultivate hate rhetoric, and perpetrate unprovoked aggression and violence against the clergy and believers of the canonical Church.

Members of radical nationalist groups are enlisted to carry out such reprisals, with assurances that they will escape legal responsibility when breaking the law. Ukraine has developed and tacitly legitimised an entire system of backroom arrangements that encourages violations of the fundamental rights and freedoms of believers and clergy.

❌ Religious persecution has now not merely intensified – it has become fully systematic, a fact acknowledged even by many Western politicians.

One of the reasons behind the current catastrophic situation facing Orthodox Christians in Ukraine is Western support for the Kiev regime’s religious policy, first and foremost from the US. This issue is also examined in the report.

Despite the vast number of documented cases of persecution against the canonical Church and clear violations of Ukraine’s international legal obligations in the field of human rights, these violations have still not received due attention from universal multilateral organisations, including the UN and its leadership, which refrain from issuing detailed reports on the matter or responding firmly, limiting themselves to routine references to the problem.

#KievRegimeCrimes