Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions at a joint news conference following talks with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Nicaragua Denis Moncada, Moscow, March 30, 2023

Ladies and gentlemen,

We held talks with a delegation from Nicaragua led by Foreign Minister Denis Moncada and Special Representative of the Nicaraguan President for Relations with Russia Laureano Ortega. Other delegates represent other agencies of the Nicaraguan Government, including the economy, healthcare, law enforcement and security. It is a large interagency delegation, which plans to hold over a dozen meetings during its three-day visit to Moscow. We will scrutinise all spheres of our cooperation, discuss the results we have achieved and the areas where we need to redouble our efforts, as well as make plans for the future in accordance with the agreements reached between our countries at the top level.

We are bound by close ties of strategic partnership. They go back in history and are based on the deep mutual affinity of the peoples of Russia and Nicaragua, as well as the experience of joint work to uphold justice and international law on the global stage and to overcome the illegal obstacles which the United States and its satellites create to the normal development and life of independent states that refuse to bow to diktat.

We conduct an intensive political dialogue at the high and top levels, and maintain contacts between our ministries, agencies and parliaments and cooperation between our municipalities, sister cities, universities and civil societies.

We have reaffirmed our commitment to continue building up our trade and economic cooperation in the current circumstances. It is somewhat lagging behind the targets we have in mind. In this context, we have agreed to use the potential of the Russia-Nicaragua Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation.

We have a positive view on the implementation of several significant bilateral projects, such as the years-long operation of the joint Latin American Institute of Biotechnology Mechnikov in Managua, which manufactures much-needed medicines and vaccines for Nicaragua and other regional countries. Today, we have coordinated far-reaching plans in this sphere.

The Training Centre (branch) of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Siberian Law Institute is active in training law enforcement officers from Central American and Caribbean countries, not only Nicaragua. This is a region-wide educational establishment.

A GLONASS ground station is operating as well. Today, we discussed plans for further cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space.  

Some other issues on the agenda are studying the possibility of additional supplies of Russian grain and automotive equipment to the Nicaraguan market and helping Nicaragua to modernise its infrastructure, develop its national early warning and emergency relief system, and build up its peaceful nuclear potential.  There was a special focus on this topic during meetings with Mr Minister’s delegation. By tradition, military and military-technical cooperation is a priority in our contacts. It also has good potential for further development.  

We talked about promoting our scientific, technological, cultural and humanitarian exchanges, including in education. We regularly allocate scholarships for our Nicaraguan friends to study at Russian universities, including in the specialties of nuclear power generation and non-energy uses of peaceful atom, as well as in law enforcement.    

We highly appreciate our interaction at international organisations. We have coinciding positions on key modern issues, which are based on the UN Charter, primarily the principle of sovereign equality of states and non-interference in their internal affairs. We reject diktat and pressure that are increasingly widespread in the world as a result of the US-led Western countries choosing blackmail and threats instead of diplomacy, including the use of illegal sanctions and other methods up to the use of force.   

We will cooperate closely at the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter established a couple of years ago. It already includes two dozen countries and will grow stronger.

We would like to promote Russia’s dialogue and cooperation with the leading Latin American and Caribbean associations, above all CELAC, an umbrella for all countries in this major and rapidly developing region. We also have good relations with the Central American Integration System, where Russia will soon be granted an observer status. There is a relevant agreement to this effect.  Let me also note good ties existing between our State Duma deputies and Federation Council senators and the Central American Parliament.

I believe our talks were very useful. I thank our colleagues and friends.

Question: The UN Security Council rejected Russia’s draft resolution on creating a commission to investigate the Nord Stream terrorist attacks. What further steps does Moscow and, in particular the Foreign Ministry, plan to take in this regard?

Sergey Lavrov: Watching the Western countries twist and turn during the UN Security Council meeting with the sole goal of not approving an instruction to the Secretary-General to organise an impartial, objective and transparent investigation into what clearly were terrorist attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipelines was an illuminating and enlightening spectacle.

Everyone understands these were terrorist attacks and that the overly serious Western officials have their fingers in that pie. They don’t want this investigation to be truly objective. The Western countries and other UN Security Council members, who yielded to severe pressure from the Anglo-Saxons, the French and others and joined the group of abstaining states, wondered why they would spread thin their efforts at a time where national investigations initiated by Denmark, Sweden and Germany were underway and all there was to do was wait until they come up with their findings which will clear up the situation.

Our next step will be not to let off the hook the above national investigations and the people who swore these efforts would be enough to ascertain the truth. We will spare no effort to do the job right, since the issue is far from being settled.

We understand the West can lie through its teeth and promise things, and then prove, for the umpteenth time, its chronic inability to negotiate, including with regard to investigating particular incidents.

We remember the number of times the West lied over the past 20 years, such as in 2007 when it claimed Alexander Litvinenko had been poisoned by polonium at a hospital in London. We were instantly accused and punishment was announced. Subsequently, the investigation was classified as “public.” British jurisprudence is full of ambiguous terms and “public” means “closed” where government bodies can classify certain issues.

Great Britain again, this time the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury. They immediately put the blame on us, following the “highly likely” principle. Our official inquiries about our citizens were ignored, even though we drew them up in full accordance with international conventions. This is a gross violation of the commitments that regulate cooperation between law enforcement agencies. Until now, no one has any information about the results of numerous tests conducted in Salisbury where, according to British investigators, the Skripals received a “lethal” dose of poison only to miraculously survive, or their whereabouts. They are Russian citizens. Letting Russia know about their whereabouts is a direct duty of those who “hid” them.

Alexey Navalny was clearly a case of foul play. The most glaring evidence thereof is that Germany, which carried out the tests that allegedly showed the presence of illegal substances in his blood, outright refused to make the results of this test available to Russia. You know what they said? They said they were unable to comply, because the test was done at a Bundeswehr clinic (the German civilian clinic didn’t find anything wrong with Navalny’s test results). They said they would not give us the test results, because that would give us a clue about the level of their biological science. This is quite an interesting confession. They referred us to the OPCW saying they had sent everything there, and the OPCW will tell us everything we need to know. But the OPCW didn’t share anything with us, either, saying it was Germany’s property, which is not surprising, since the OPCW has long been privatised by the West through measures taken in flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Now the OPCW Technical Secretariat is openly acting upon the order of the Anglo-Saxons, the French and other Western countries.

As for our expectations of fair judgements from the Western system of justice, another case in point is the Malaysian Boeing disaster in July 2014. Its investigation was organised in a very strange way. They set up a group of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine, although the usual practice is not to invite countries that may be connected with the causes of the accident. Since the disaster took place in the Ukrainian airspace, it was obvious to everyone that it should not be invited. Nevertheless, Ukraine was invited. Moreover, Malaysia, whose plane crashed over Ukraine, was not immediately invited to join the group of investigators. This only happened several months later.

At the initial stage, that narrow group of countries – Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine – made a secret agreement not to disclose any information that had not been coordinated among them. Following that, we supplied all the data during the investigation, including initial data from our radars. Ukraine did not provide anything, just like the United States, which said that its satellites had seen everything, and that Russia was to blame. However, the Americans did not provide the data from their satellites to anyone, while the Dutch court obediently bowed their heads and said that the Americans’ word about their satellites “seeing” something was quite enough and they did not need any further proof.

It is no compliment to that investigation and trial that all but one of the more than 12 witnesses remained anonymous. Their names have not been disclosed.

I am going into these details to show you that we should harbour no illusions about the fairness of Western investigations into the events in which it itself is directly or indirectly involved, or the Western ability to honestly and openly own up to what will or can be revealed.

Nevertheless, we will not back off even though we are extremely sceptical about the outcome of that Western investigation. They have refused to launch an international investigation, saying that the investigations conducted by their narrow group are faultless. But I think they will not get away with it or, if they continue with their evasive tactics, their own public will see their worth.