Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks following a ceremony of laying flowers to the memorial plaques inside the Foreign Ministry Building on the occasion of Diplomatic Worker’s Day, Moscow, February 10, 2025

Colleagues,

Friends,

Today, as usual, we are paying tribute to the memory of our predecessors – employees of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, who went to fight the enemy at the front, and those who were creating additional conditions for the success of the anti-Hitler coalition in their workplaces. Our colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Trade fought and worked side by side with us.

We honour the memory of our colleagues, who died on the job while performing the tasks set by Motherland, and the memory of victims of political repressions. Today, I want to welcome our friends from embassies of CIS countries, other close allies, and heads of executive boards of CIS integration alliances, who are taking part in this ceremony for the third time.   

Our common task is to preserve the historical memory and prevent the rewriting of history of that war. It is the peoples of the USSR that bore the brunt of Victory in it. On these days, we have come together, as our leaders will at the May 9 Victory Parade in honour of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War that was won by the Soviet people. Like it was 80 years ago, when Hitler unified nearly the whole of Europe and committed the subdued countries’ troops against the Soviet Union in order to vanquish our country and deprive it of any chance of development. Currently, as you may know, we are pressing for Nazi atrocities to be recognised as the genocide of the peoples of the USSR.  Nevertheless, we stood our ground and won, as we always had and always would.

Today, like 80 years ago, the whole of Europe has banded together and declared the need to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Russian Federation by employing the Kiev regime as their proxy. And again, this is happening under the Nazi banners and with the use of Nazi symbols.

Our sacred duty is to do all we can to achieve in full the goals of the special military operation, as ordained by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and performed every day by our heroes at the fronts of the special military operation.    

I am pleased that the Foreign Ministry staff, GLAVUPDK, the Veterans Council, and the Young Diplomats’ Council help and are involved in the national support for the special military operation, including visits to areas of hostilities and delivery of humanitarian assistance and other necessary things that make the life of our fighters more varied and help them display courage and heroism in the struggle against the enemy. In the same way as during World War II and the Great Patriotic War, Russian diplomats worked to create the anti-Hitler coalition and were actively involved in the meeting of the victorious powers that were preparing the establishment of the United Nations. In the same way as today we are faced with a no less crucial turning-point in history, where a coalition of Global Majority countries no longer wants to live in a world of disrespect for the principles of the UN Charter. I am referring primarily to the principle of sovereign equality of states    and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of each other. Instead, “rules” are being imposed on the Global Majority, which supposedly should underlie the world order.  But the overwhelming majority of world nations are increasingly aware that this system is unjust and unable to meet their long-term interests. This realisation is coming fairly fast.  

Our task – in parallel to the diplomatic and foreign policy support for the special military operation as our main priority – is to make all Global South and Global East countries realise that there is no alternative to a multipolar international order and that it is absolutely necessary to protect the fundamental principles of the UN Charter that ensure equality and justice in international affairs.

The task at that time was to approve these principles and make them the key instrument of international law. Today, we are facing the task of defending this instrument. And yet, the main thing is to make all those noble principles work. This will not be easy, because the West does not want any equality. Over the last 500-odd years, they have become used to leading and domineering. The setbacks and miscalculations that we have observed in the West’s foreign policy and military adventures over the last 40 to 50 years have taught it nothing.  They are again dreaming of suffering a “crushing victory” somewhere.

Today, it is of fundamental importance for us, like in the years of the Great Patriotic War, to display fortitude and commitment to the ideals of our Motherland, its history, legacy of our great ancestors, and simultaneously to the ideals of the UN Charter.   

The world will be more democratic and multipolar, and it largely depends on our work and on our interaction with our allies, like-minded people, and strategic partners how fast it will be possible to arrive at a situation where our Western “neighbours” on this planet will also realise that there is no alternative to precisely this honest approach.

My special thanks are for our veteran diplomats who continue to share their experience with their younger colleagues. The fact that this ceremony is being attended by representatives of both the Veterans Council and the Young Diplomats’ Council  is yet another evidence of the continuity that has always distinguished this Ministry and helps to cherish and creatively develop the rich heritage left to us by our predecessors.

I want to thank our friends from the National Guard of Russia, who each time ensure the special solemnity of this ceremony.