Response by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to a media query regarding the recent remarks by the chief EU diplomat Josep Borrell

Query: How would you characterize Josep Borrell’s comments after the joint meeting of EU Member States’ Foreign and Defense Ministers on March 21st? What is the reasoning behind such rhetoric by EU officials?

Response: The remarks by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell following the joint meeting of the EU Council at Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers level on March 21st are proof that aspirations of the European Union to be regarded as a peaceful or a “diplomatic” alliance are little more than fiction. This is confirmed by the policy of EU militarization and the methodical merging of its military and political structures with NATO.

The EU’s leadership has failed to draw the correct conclusions from its own statement that its neighbourhood – “from Gibraltar to Ukraine” –
is engulfed in “a circle of challenges and dangerous situations”. Although one only has to be reminded of the military operations against Yugoslavia in 1999, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, illicitly waged by the USA and its European allies in direct circumvention of the UN Security Council. Of the West’s social and political “engineering” of the Middle East and Northern Africa that has since provoked waves of migration to the EU. Of the confrontational expansion of NATO – and subsequently the EU – to the East, which resulted in the anti-constitutional coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 and the following attempts by Kiev to militarily suppress Donbass as well as Kiev’s systematic stifling of the Russian language. Obviously, it is not the EU’s neighbourhood that is the source of the problem, but rather the irresistible desire of Brussels (backed by Washington) to interfere in the affairs of neighbouring sovereign states and their peoples.

Brussels is hypocritical in arguing about the “weaponisation of dependencies” while remaining shamefully silent that it is European officials who are using that same weapon against EU Member States and their population. The inflationary blow against the markets for energy, fertilizers, food, metals, as well as supply chains and equity markets in Europe was delivered not by Russia, but by European bureaucracy that failed to anticipate the implications of its restrictive measures for trans-European business relationships and citizens of EU Member States. There is a clear aspiration to exploit the theme of Russophobia to score political points while brushing aside the interests of common Europeans.

The Russian side systematically registers all steps towards the introduction of new anti-Russian measures, as well as their architects. We are well aware that such decisions in the EU are adopted by consensus – which means that each and every Member State is able to block them. We view as unacceptable the "collective irresponsibility" of the EU, when Member States cite the pressure of the European Commission as justification for collective anti-Russian decisions whereas Brussels in turn takes cover behind the position of Member States.

Russia stands accused of allegedly exploiting refugees from Ukraine as an instrument of pressure, prompting them to move towards the EU. In reality it is the authorities in Kiev that are prohibiting the evacuation of refugees to our country and forcibly turning them westwards. Many of them still attempt to enter Russia, to be reunited with their relatives, but are prevented from completing their journey by EU Member States, primarily Poland. People are taken hostages first by Kiev and then by Brussels.

In the meantime the Russian Ministry of Defense is organizing humanitarian corridors and the evacuation of civilians from populated areas on a daily basis.
In addition there have been two prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine. However the EU has so far failed to exert pressure on Kiev to prevent the Ukrainian nationalists from using civilians as “human shields” and blocking their pathways to Russia. Apparently, the EU, if it recognizes these facts, risks shattering the deceitful narrative, diligently manufactured by Western media, that completely distorts the real objectives and methods of the Russian special military operation.

Brussels is whipping up Russophobic hysteria, yet has never spoken out to protect Russians and Russian-speakers who have been subject in EU Member States to politically motivated everyday violence, mistreatment and infringement of their rights on ethnic grounds. Both Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová and the EU Special Representative for Human Rights Eamon Gilmore keep silent on the issue. Josep Borrell in his March 21st statement on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination managed to condemn Russia’s actions while turning a blind eye to manifestations of xenophobia and intolerance towards Russian citizens and Russian-speaking residents in the EU.

The attack by Ukrainian armed forces against the center of Donetsk with the use of a “Tochka-U” cluster munitions missile, which on March 14th took the lives of 21 civilians and injured over 30 more, has passed the EU by without notice. Brussels seems to be oblivious to this fact or simply does not care. What bothers the EU far more than human rights in Ukraine is stepping up funding for military supplies to Kiev so it could use these lethal weapons to keep on killing people.

For the same reason the EU “disinfo” exporters have yet to debunk a single Ukrainian fake, or a single staged shooting, or footage from other world regions and different historical periods (from the Western Balkans to Syria), or clips from movies and computer games commonly used by Ukrainian propagandists. However truth makes its way. The EU is advised to pay closer attention to the alleged «killing» of Ukrainian border guards on the Zmeiny (Snake) Island on the February 24th, who in fact have been taken prisoner, are alive and well; to the woman with a bandaged head, whose staged photo on February 25th went viral across the world, only to be exposed as a regular officer within the Ukrainian military intelligence; to the repelled attack by a Ukrainian saboteur group on the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant on the night of March 3rd/4th; to the alleged “aerial bombing” of a maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9th that had been occupied by Ukrainian Nazis in late February; to the Mariupol Drama Theatre blown up by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion on March 16th.

The incapability to objectively pass judgment and make independent decisions as well as “double standards” – these are the factors that at the end of the day prevent the EU from getting along with its neighbors, undermines its credibility and deprives it of respect in the international community.