Remarks by deputy head of the Russian delegation and Deputy Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Department for Arms Nonproliferation and Control Konstantin Vorontsov, speaking in exercise of his right to reply during the thematic discussion on Conventional Arms at the First Committee of the 77th Session of the UN General Assembly, New York, October 21, 2022
Mr President,
We categorically reject the Western countries’ accusations against Russia as untenable. The NATO countries modestly prefer to keep quiet about their own involvement in the Ukrainian crisis. But truth will out: as if emulating each other, they continue to supply a stream of weapons and ammunition for use by the Kiev regime, providing it with intelligence, training its fighters, and briefing it on how to conduct hostilities. Thereby, they are approaching the red line fraught with the danger of a direct military clash with Russia.
According to last week’s update published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the West’s combined military aid to Ukraine amounts to $42.3 billion, with Kiev’s main sponsor, the United States, accounting for $28.3 billion. But the US is not going to be satisfied with what has already been achieved. On October 14, it announced a new installment worth $725 million. The EU countries and European institutions have forked out $8.6 billion.
Washington is still the main beneficiary of the continuing bloodshed, since the European countries have to buy arms and military equipment from the US. It should be recalled that the US lend lease plan for Ukraine, 90 percent of which consists of loans that Kiev is unable to repay, enables Washington to provide its military-industrial complex with orders and dampen down inflation in the country by creating new jobs. One can confidently say that a considerable portion of these weapons have already reached – or will soon reach – the black market, which derives monthly revenues of more than $1 billion from smuggling.
The armed forces of Ukraine will use the new deliveries of military products to Kiev that have been announced to continue their terrorist shelling of civilians in the Russian Federation. We emphasise that the EU and NATO countries have made their choice in favour of the systems that proved most lethal to civilians in Donbass and the liberated territories. For example, the United States will supply Kiev with yet another batch of its M142 HIMARS rocket launchers and highly accurate М31 GMLRS guided missiles, which destroy civilian homes and cripple or kill elderly people, women and children on a daily basis.
Ukraine is expected to receive US AGM-88 HARM airborne anti-radar missiles, which the Ukrainian neo-Nazis already use to deliver treacherous strikes on residential areas in Belgorod, where there are no military facilities. At the same time, we see Ukraine’s military-political leadership go out of its way to accuse Russia of “artillery self-attacks.” But truth will always make its way. Last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told Russian pranksters that Kiev was behind the attacks on Crimea and the Belgorod Region. He also openly stated that the Ukrainian army had planned its counterattack in the south in direct cooperation with the United States and the UK.
From France, Kiev will receive new 155mm Caesar self-propelled artillery systems, which have also shown their might in an unequal battle with residential houses, schools and administrative buildings. With direct French support, Ukrainian radical nationalists have killed no less than five people and wounded 10 in Donetsk, with more than 64 buildings ruined or destroyed.
Along with Canada and the United States, Germany has announced the delivery of 155mm ammunition to Kiev: the Ukrainian armed forces use it daily to fire at civilians in Donbass and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, which have become constituent entities of the Russian Federation. We also noticed Head of the Federal Chancellery Wolfgang Schmidt’s remarks to the effect that the Kiev regime’s expectations with regard to Leopard-2 tanks were comparable to the enthusiasm the German Nazis felt about V-2 missiles. With surprising ease, Berlin has forgotten everything Russia did towards Germany’s unification, and likewise the difficulties both countries, Russia and Germany, encountered in achieving reconciliation. Today, German guns are killing Russians again.
Information is coming in that Kiev is likely to use banned warfare methods in the Kherson area, including preparations for a missile attack on the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. The Western instigators of this criminal strategy are well known.
The EU and NATO’s arms supplies to Ukraine make them accomplices in the aggression against Russia, as well as in the military crimes and terrorist attacks, which Kiev has perpetrated against civilians over the last eight years. All those implicated in these offenses will certainly be brought to account and face punishment.
Thank you for your time.