Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening remarks during talks with ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric, Moscow, January 20, 2023

Madam President,

Colleagues,

Welcome to Moscow. This is your first visit here since your appointment to this office. We appreciate the contribution by the International Committee of the Red Cross to overcoming humanitarian crises around the world, helping victims of armed conflicts and promoting compliance with international humanitarian law. We wish you every success in delivering on these challenging tasks in all the geographies where the ICRC operates.

Russia’s cooperation with the ICRC has been gaining momentum in recent years. We have been fruitfully working together on the humanitarian agenda for quite a long time in Syria, Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh and other hotspots, and provide voluntary funding for your programmes.

The year 2022 has changed a lot in our work with the International Committee of the Red Cross. We are certain that the well-balanced and responsible policy the ICRC is striving to follow across the world will be critical in the context of developments in and around Ukraine.

We believe that the Red Cross’ readiness to act impartially on Ukrainian issues and use its unique humanitarian mandate could play a key role in preserving the atmosphere of constructive cooperation between us.

Over the years of our cooperation with the ICRC, we always had sincere respect for its mandate and valued your impartial, politics-free work. We have never taken advantage of our relations with the ICRC to achieve our domestic political goals.

It is our hope that all other partners of the International Committee of the Red Cross, especially your major donors, will strictly adhere to the same policy line.

I hope that during your visit, including during this conversation, as well as in your contacts at the Russian Defence Ministry, we will discuss the most urgent issues related to protecting civilians and service personnel in detention.

I would like to reaffirm the commitment of the Russian Federation to international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions. We are taking all the precautions we can to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Once again, I would like to draw your attention to blatant human rights violations by the Ukrainian regime. These violations are backed with evidence. You can find it on social media and in other sources of information. They have been piling up for eight long years since the February 2014 state coup in Kiev.

What is happening right now is largely the result of the Western connivance with the Kiev regime’s determination to subvert its commitment to the Minsk agreements, primarily to grant special status to people in eastern Ukraine. Instead, Donbass faced daily shelling and civilian infrastructure destruction. People were dying but few noticed that.

I have no doubt that ICRC staff know this story well. For almost all these long years, your representatives have been working in Donetsk and Lugansk. We expect the ICRC to further step up its efforts for resolving the issue with visits to captured Russian nationals and ensuring their rights. The Ukrainian regime has been torturing many of them and using other inhuman pressure methods against them.

Meanwhile, the Nazi battalions at the service of the Kiev regime have had no scruples when they uploaded videos online showing their atrocities against Russian citizens, including the infamous video in which unarmed prisoners were executed by firing.

We actively support efforts to ensure access to service personnel who were taken captive. We will do everything we can to ensure this kind of access to Ukrainian soldiers.

I am looking forward to hearing your assessments of the processes in which the ICRC is involved, especially taking into consideration your recent visit to Kiev. Of course, we are ready to discuss matters related to our cooperation in other spheres and regions.