Statement by deputy director of department for non-proliferation and arms control, mfa of russia, Mr. Anton mazur at the 1084th plenary meeting of the osce forum for security co-operation, 17 July 2024
Agenda item: “General Statements”
Topic: “On Special Military Operation to Demilitarize and Denazify Ukraine”
Mr. Chairman,
In my statement, I will touch upon the topic on which our delegation took the floor. At the same time, I will try to highlight the broader context that is probably more evident from Moscow than from the OSCE headquarters located on the periphery of the Eurasian continent.
Mr. Chairman,
The special military operation (SMO) carried out by the Russian Federation in order to protect the civilian population of Donbass, reestablish peace, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, ensure its neutral, non-bloc status, and restore the security balance in Europe continues. New cities, towns and villages are being liberated, the Nazi-Bandera formations of the regime that usurped power in Kiev and its military-industrial potential are being crushed. The SMO goals will be achieved. Of course, the political and diplomatic path is preferable for Russia. This is confirmed by the peace proposal put forward by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on 14 June.
Let me remind you of the essence of that proposal.
Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the entire territory of the Donetsk, Lugansk People's Republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions within their administrative borders that existed at the time they were part of Ukraine.
As soon as Kiev begins a real withdrawal of troops from those regions, and also officially notifies the abandonment of plans to join NATO, the Russian side will immediately cease fire, guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations, and begin negotiations. They should be not about a truce or a ceasefire, nor about freezing the conflict, but on its final completion.
Our principled position in the negotiations will include: the neutral non-aligned nuclear-free status of Ukraine, its demilitarization and denazification, ensuring the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine, recognition of new territorial realities, including the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Lugansk People's Republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as subjects of the Russian Federation. In the future, all these fundamental provisions should be recorded in the form of fundamental international agreements. This also presupposes the lifting of all Western sanctions against Russia.
Having resolved the Ukrainian crisis, we could begin to create an indivisible Eurasian security system that takes into account the interests of all States of the continent without exception (I will touch upon this issue later).
Of course, without Russia’s participation, without an honest and responsible dialogue with us, it is impossible to reach a peaceful solution in Ukraine and on security issues in general. No “Buergenstocks” or false “peace formulas” will help here. If our proposal is rejected in Kiev and in the Western Capitals again (and for now, it seems that this is what is happening), then, in the end, it is their problem. Obviously, the realities on the ground will continue to change not in favor of the Kiev regime. And the conditions for starting negotiations will be different.
At the same time, I would like to emphasize that the roots of the crisis associated with Ukraine are not in bilateral relations. The events in Ukraine are the result of the aggressive, unceremonious and adventurous policy that the West has pursued and is pursuing in recent decades. For the West, the main thing was the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and then of Russia.
As part of this strategy, Western countries took the line of absorption and military-political digestion, first, of Central and Eastern Europe, and then of the post-Soviet space. They tried to turn Ukraine into their foothold, to make it not just “non-Russia”, but “anti-Russia”. To achieve these goals, they invested resources, created personnel and organizational-political prerequisites for a future coup, rewrote history, school and university curricula, and nurtured future Nazi fighters. They did everything to drive a wedge between our countries and peoples. At the same time, throughout all these years, and especially since 2014, they considered Ukraine only as a springboard and a tool in the confrontation with Russia. There was no sign of any respect for the Ukrainian people; they were needed only as practically free manpower. Just remember the famous statements of Victoria Nuland. That mid-level official allowed herself to indicate in very undiplomatic terms who should lead Ukraine and where the place of the European Union with its interests was.
The same thing continues today. Washington, London and Brussels only need land from Ukraine (both as fertile black soil and as a springboard) and “cannon fodder”, which can be thrown into assaults on Russian positions. The rest – command, money, weapons, advisers, instructors, auditors – everything is Western. And those who stand behind Zelenskiy today absolutely do not care who will be killed by the missiles they supply - residents of Belgorod, Donetsk or Kiev, as was the case a few days ago, when an AIM-120 missile fired by a NASAMS air defense system hit a children's hospital in the capital of Ukraine.
At the same time, NATO countries, on the one hand, declare their non-participation in the conflict, and on the other, they are doing everything they can to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield.” They are climbing the escalation ladder step by step and in their arms transfers have already gone the way from non-lethal weapons to long-range missiles. Next are combat aircraft, which were developed as dual-capable systems. It is obvious that they will not help the neo-Nazi regime. And what is then? Sending their own combat units and formations into battle with a significant amount of modern heavy equipment? Giving them nuclear weapons? After all, with each new level, the degree of freedom of those making decisions becomes less and less. They cannot afford to be seen as “weaklings”. Where does this lead? Just look at the history of the US being drawn into the Vietnam War and remember how it ended. Now the consequences of escalation getting out of control will be much more grave.
We see not only the involvement of NATO countries and the alliance as a whole in the conflict around Ukraine. We also see that preparations for a direct clash with Russia have already begun. Relevant plans include increasing the size of the armed forces and the number of weapons, their redeployment to the East, increasing military production, developing military transport infrastructure, creating strategic reserves, dehumanizing Russians in propaganda and even building prisoner of war camps...
Those who seriously hope to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia” need to understand that there is no need to fuss – in any case, they will not live to see their planned victory over a Great Nuclear Power.
On May 30, 1962, six months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the famous British commander Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery said: “Rule 1, on page I of the book of war, is: “Do not march on Moscow.” Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule... Rule 2 of war... is: “Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.” True, he further proposed relying on air and sea power to ensure the main offensive strike in an unrestricted nuclear warfare, but then life itself very soon corrected him, demonstrating that the US superiority in missiles, aircraft and submarines did not ensure their victory in the confrontation with the USSR. So, I advise our opponents to learn by heart at least the first part of this quote.
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Mr. Chairman,
To be honest, I hesitated for a long time that it would be expedient to deliver this statement. The OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC), which once served as a platform for professional dialogue among participating States, albeit sometimes difficult and heated, but generally mutually respectful and constructive, has changed a lot, and not for the better. As a result of the destructive activities of our opponents (it is, alas, no longer possible to call them the traditional FSC term “partners”), it has turned into a platform for confrontation. Some FSC Chairpersonships have been attempting to impose on participating States a one-sided agenda that does not take into account the full spectrum of views and has little or no relevance to the FSC's mandate. Our opponents sometimes descend to “khutor (farmstead) diplomacy”, not disdaining threats and even obscene language (apparently, this is precisely the professional level that is in demand today in the foreign policy departments of some Western countries). And when our delegation is given the floor, they cover their ears and claim “Russian threat!” and “Russian propaganda!”, chaotically running towards the exit. All this would be funny if it weren't so sad.
However, the degradation of both the FSC and the OSCE as a whole did not begin yesterday.
At the end of the 20th century, after the end of the Cold War, we all had a unique chance to build a reliable, fair security order. This required the ability to listen to the opinions of all interested parties and mutual willingness to take them into account. Russia was committed to precisely this kind of constructive work. However, the Western powers, led by the United States, believed that they had won the Cold War and had the right to independently determine how the world should be organized.
We remember how already in the mid-90s, delegations of NATO countries refused to use their own language of five years ago in the OSCE politico-military documents. Averting their eyes, they referred to the fact that allegedly “circumstances have changed.” But in fact, they carried out the instructions, according to that all serious pol-mil decisions should be made not in Vienna, but in Brussels, at the headquarters of the alliance.
We remember how NATO expansion began and the concept of “American leadership” emerged, which included the thesis about the uselessness of arms control. Against this background, Western countries for years and years categorically refused to agree on measures that would at least partially neutralize the negative consequences of the alliance’s expansion for the security of Russia and a number of other participating States. And if it was possible to reach a common ground, for example, on the Agreement on Adaptation of the CFE Treaty, then the orders to its allies came from Washington: “Do not allow the Agreement to come into force!”. And the allies readily obeyed. The same thing happened with confidence-building measures – we were told that “the Vienna Document should not be reopened”
We remember how NATO resisted all our attempts – first in the Joint Consultative Group (JCG) and then in the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) – to specify the commitment to renounce additional permanent deployment of “substantial combat forces.” Here we can also mention their negative reaction to our broader proposals: the draft European Security Treaty (2008) and proposals for mutual Security Guarantees with the United States and NATO (2021).
All these facts indicate a long-standing neglect of Russia's security interests by the US and its allies. They sought to build a security model in the European region that would presuppose their dominance and would ignore the repeatedly proclaimed principle of the indivisibility of security. The events of recent years have clearly demonstrated that such a “Euro-Atlantic” concept has proven its inconsistency and actually come to collapse. This could not but affect the OSCE and, in particular, the politico-military dimension of its activities. Russia, on the other hand, sought to defend those principles that were laid down in Helsinki (for example, the sovereign equality of participating States), and then enshrined, in particular, in Astana (the indivisibility of security).
Now is the moment of truth. Either our opponents will reconsider their approaches and return from fanning confrontation to the path of cooperation (although, let’s face it, we no longer believe in such sanity on their part). Or the existing institutions will be completely marginalized, and we will be faced with the question whether it is expedient to continue participation in them, investing effort and resources.
Obviously, in the context of accelerating world order reorganization, it is equally in the interests of Russia and the majority of independent States of our continent that a system of bilateral and multilateral guarantees of collective security in Eurasia develops. It was also mentioned by the President of Russia on 14 June. The time has come to begin a broad discussion on such a system. It will be open to all interested Eurasian States and not directed against anyone’s interests; it will embody the principle of “regional problems – regional solutions” in relation to the mainland. This would serve as a safety net against geopolitical upheavals arising from the crisis of globalization, built according to Western patterns. Within the framework of the new architecture, military-political guarantees would be designed to protect its participants from external threats, a conflict-free space would be created, open to cooperation in the interests of all States located here, and the destabilizing influence of extra-regional players would be minimized or eliminated. At the same time, in the future it is necessary to work towards a gradual reduction in the military presence of external powers in the Eurasian region.
Of course, a literal return to the Russian security proposals that we put forward 25, 15 or even two years ago is impossible – too much has happened, circumstances have changed. However, the basic principles and, most importantly, the very subject of the dialogue remain unchanged. It is up to each of the European and Asian States represented in this room to decide whether to take part in the creation of such a system or remain on the sidelines of this process.
Mr. Chairman,
I understand that only a few will hear this speech at the Hofburg, and even fewer will present it correctly in their cables. And yet today I am sure that it makes sense to deliver it, if only because ordinary people in countries that have become unfriendly to us have the right to know the truth.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
