The Spanish newspaper
@abc_es requested an interview from M.V. Zakharova, and then refused to publish it. There is no doubt, there is a fact of undisguised censorship. Under these conditions, we publish the full text of the failed interview of the official representative
Interview of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry M.V. Zakharova to the Spanish newspaper A-Be-Se
Question: Could you explain at what stage the peace talks with Ukraine are at?
Answer: Russian-Ukrainian talks are continuing. After three full-time rounds in Belarus and one in Turkey, they are held in video format. They discuss issues of resolving the situation in Ukraine, establishing its neutral, non-nuclear and non-bloc status, demilitarization and denazification, as well as security guarantees. Unfortunately, the position of the Ukrainian delegation is very volatile, and the negotiation process is accompanied by aggressive rhetoric from Kyiv and the West, the supply of Western weapons, which does not contribute to reaching agreements.
Question: In your opinion, are international mechanisms applicable for resolving the conflict in Donbass?
Answer: For the past eight years, Russia has made every effort to resolve the conflict in Donbas by peaceful means. With our mediation, the “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements of February 12, 2015” was signed, which was approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2202. It provided for a clear sequence of steps leading to the reintegration of Donbass into Ukraine under the conditions of a special status for the region.
However, the Ukrainian leadership categorically refused to do so. Our attempts to force the Kyiv regime to comply with the "Package of Measures" were unsuccessful. The armed formations of Ukraine did not stop shelling the Donbass. An inhuman socio-economic and transport blockade was introduced against its inhabitants, which put the region on the brink of survival. Such a destructive line of Kyiv was actively supported by the United States and its NATO allies, who carried out the military development of the territory of Ukraine, encouraged the promotion of aggressive Russophobia, ignored neo-Nazi manifestations, turning the country into a springboard against Russia. As it turned out later, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were preparing to seize Donbas by force for March.
As a result, we were left with no other choice but to recognize February 21 of this year. independence of the DPR and LHP, and on February 24 of this year. launch a special military operation to protect people living in Donbass, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. All her goals and objectives will certainly be fulfilled.
Question: Do you think that the territorial demands placed on Ukraine, specifically on the Donbass, make it difficult to reach an agreement?
Answer: These are already established territorial realities that Kyiv and other countries need to recognize. They arose because of the policy of the Kyiv authorities themselves, who came to power through a neo-Nazi coup in 2014. Crimea returned to Russia, the DPR and LHP became independent states. We must respect the legitimate and informed choice of peoples and the right of nations to self-determination, enshrined in the UN Charter.
Question: Why was Russia able to use force in Chechnya, Georgia, and now in Ukraine, while Kyiv cannot do the same in relation to Donetsk and Lugansk?
Answer: Georgian authorities attacked South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers. How interesting that they remembered the situation in Chechnya. These are completely different situations. Chechen fighters used terrorist methods, committed acts of terrorism in Chechnya itself and other regions of the Russian Federation. And they were considered democratic forces and supported in the US and the EU. Do you remember what the reaction of the international community was then? Everyone supported the separatists - although they were not separatists, but international terrorists. The first in Europe, by the way. The USA, Britain, European countries then called them freedom fighters. Now I have a question: why did the West not call the inhabitants of Donbass “freedom fighters”? After all, they are not terrorists. And it was difficult to call them separatists, since in the Minsk agreements, which were signed by the DPR and LPR, Donbass was called part of Ukraine. And in general, the whole Minsk package of measures is about how the DPR and LPR will live as part of Ukraine. So why didn't the West support them?
But the inhabitants of Donbass were killed for eight years. Killed civilians, children. On the territory of Europe, at the behest of Kyiv, children's cemeteries appeared. Where was the government of Spain, for example? Now everyone in the EU is talking about refugees from Ukraine. Did you know that in 2014-2015 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine came to Russia? And the West was silent again. Not a single sanction has been applied to the Kyiv regime to induce it to stop killing people for eight years.
The Kyiv regime came to power in an unconstitutional way and for eight years used military force against its own people - the civilians of Donbass. He shelled the territory of the DPR and LPR, using heavy artillery. Thousands of civilians were killed, including women and children. Residential buildings, water, electricity and gas supply facilities, hospitals and schools were hit. Kyiv imposed an economic and transport blockade of Donbass, putting its inhabitants on the brink of survival.
We regularly drew the attention of Western countries to the genocide of the population of the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, which continued all these years, which refused to accept and support the results of the anti-constitutional coup d'état of 2014, opposed the massive violation of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in the country, the policy of forced Ukrainization, the destruction of Russian culture and rewriting history. However, they did not want to hear us.
There was a chance to resolve the intra-Ukrainian conflict peacefully. This is a consistent implementation of the aforementioned “Package of Measures”. However, Kyiv refused to go this way, and the countries of the West did nothing to prevent this.
The sabotage of the Minsk agreements by Ukraine, the undisguised desire of its leadership to resolve the conflict in the Donbass by force, including using weapons, equipment and other means provided by NATO countries, forced us to take those steps.
Russian actions in Chechnya, South Ossetia and now in Ukraine are absolutely legal, while the actions of the Kyiv authorities, who staged the genocide of Donbass and the destruction of everything Russian in their own country, are illegitimate, unconstitutional and immoral.
Question: Why was Russia able to sign military agreements on cooperation with South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Donetsk, Lugansk, while no one can do this with Ukraine?
Answer: What do you mean, "no one can do it"? This is the problem of the Western community - they do not understand what is happening at all. Until 2014, we signed a number of agreements with Ukraine covering a wide range of bilateral relations, including military-technical cooperation. However, after the coup d'etat in Kyiv in February 2014, the nationalist forces that came to power, with the approval of the West, unilaterally terminated them.
The United States and NATO countries needed a Ukraine that was separated from Russia as much as possible. Our concerns about this were simply ignored. We have repeatedly stressed that all countries must observe the principle of the indivisibility of security and not strengthen their security at the expense of others. Russia put forward concrete proposals on legal security guarantees, which concerned, among other things, the non-expansion of the Alliance to the East, the return of its military infrastructure to the configuration of 1997, when the Russia-NATO Founding Act was signed. However, the West ignored them.
Having recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 after Georgia's aggression against Tskhinvali and in the light of Saakashvili's similar plans for Sukhum, Russia assumed responsibility for the security of the two young republics of Transcaucasia. This task does not lose its relevance today. A number of bilateral agreements on cooperation in the military field have been signed with these countries, aimed at creating common defense and security spaces with each of them, as provided for by the agreements with Abkhazia on alliance and strategic partnership dated November 24, 2014 and with South Ossetia on alliance and integration dated March 18, 2015
Thus, the signing and implementation of the above-mentioned agreements with Sukhum and Tskhinval is dictated by the mutual interest of the parties and is an important factor in peace and stability in this part of the Transcaucasus.
Question: How will the issue of an international investigation of what happened in Bucha be decided, given that there are opposing statements: was there a provocation or were there war crimes?
Answer: The statements you made are not contradictory. The Ukrainian provocation itself is a war crime, which needs to be investigated. On April 3, in Bucha, the Kyiv regime staged a cynical stunt, accusing Russian servicemen of killing civilians. At the same time, our troops left the city on March 30, and for the entire time they were there, not a single local resident suffered from violent actions. As well as after their departure for four days, until the arrival of the Security Service of Ukraine in Bucha, there was not a single report of mass executions of people.
What the Ukrainians and their Western curators are trying to present as "the atrocities of the Russian military in Bucha" is, of course, staged. We can say this quite accurately for a number of reasons. You have probably seen the analyzes of these stagings, which were cited by the Russian Ministry of Defense, where the poor quality of Western propaganda fakes is quite clearly shown.
The important thing is that the West this time did not come up with anything new. These provocations are a mechanism they have already tested, they have already used it, there is evidence that the Nazis used exactly the same false propaganda algorithms against the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. I will name just two examples.
In October 1944, Soviet troops temporarily occupied and then left the city of Nemmersdorf. Immediately after the transfer of the city again under the control of the Third Reich, German propaganda specialists “rushed” there, including the head of the NSDAP propaganda department for East Prussia, K. Gebhardt. They worked for two days, after which the main Nazi newspaper "Völkischer Beobachter" published an article "The fury of the Soviet beasts." This article described the “horrors”, “mutilations” allegedly inflicted on the civilian population of Nemmersdorf by Soviet troops. Personally, the head of the press service of the NSDAP, Otto Dietrich, on October 26, 1944, instructed "to expose in close-up the nightmarish Bolshevik crimes in East Prussia and comment on them in the sharpest way."
The Reich even organized an "international commission", where he invited representatives of "pocket governments", in particular, Estonia. Literally in a week, H. Mäe's “commission” published a report in which they blamed Moscow for everything. H. Mäe's report at the end of 1944 became one of the most quoted documents of Goebbels' propaganda. Its copies were sent in foreign languages to all world agencies.
Naturally, after the war, this story began to be dealt with. The German war historian B. Fish, who himself participated in the battles for Nemmersdorf, admitted that after the discovery of the bodies by the German side, no attempt was made to identify them. The published images showed specially collected bodies of victims from several villages in East Prussia. And already in the 21st century, the German Foreign Ministry admitted that Nemmersdorff's falsifications were specially compiled by Pfeiffer, a lieutenant of the Wehrmacht's secret field police, after which they spread through Berlin.
But even the well-known provocation in Nemmersdorf was not the first. Back in 1941, the Ukrainian-language, I draw your attention, the Krakowski Vesti newspaper, censored and controlled directly by the Third Reich, published an article about “people who were tortured to death by“ NKVD murderers ”who lay on the streets of Lvov” in the abandoned city after the retreat of the Red Army. At the same time, the emphasis is on the nationality of the dead. Krakow News wrote that "the Bolsheviks machine-gunned 1,500 ethnic Ukrainians in Lutsk." Paradoxically, the Nazi Reich accused the international Soviet Union of genocide!
Krakow News was well aware of its role in this story - in the context of Ukraine, they were the propaganda guide of fascist Germany for the whole world. The employees of Krakowskie Vesti spoke directly about this in the press: their task is to use the victims so that “the word “Ukraine” reappears on the front pages of major periodicals,” and from “the blood of Ukrainians to make moral capital for the people.”
Exactly the same as now. Once again, fascist provocations are being used to “bring Ukraine to the front pages of newspapers”, and people's lives are just a bargaining chip in this propaganda game of the fascists.
By the way, you know what is the most interesting. The editor of Krakow News was a certain Mikhailo Khomyak, a Ukrainian collaborator and supporter of Hitler. So, he is the direct grandfather of the current Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, H. Freeland, one of the key figures among Russophobic circles on the American continent. It is H. Freeland who most often calls for isolating our country, referring, among other things, to Bucha. He simply repeats after his grandfather what he and his fascist associates failed eighty years ago.
Question: Don't you think that the current special operation in Ukraine will bring NATO even closer to Russia's borders, especially if Sweden and Finland join it?
Answer: The question is incorrect. Russia's special operation in Ukraine should be perceived as a consequence of the aggressive expansionist policy of NATO led by the United States, and not vice versa. The North Atlantic bloc, step by step, pursued a course of drawing new countries into its orbit, moving closer and closer to the Russian borders and ignoring our repeated warnings about the danger of such an approach for the entire European security system.
As for Finland and Sweden, their active “processing” has been carried out by the alliance for a long time. In order to radically influence the politics of these Scandinavian states, NATO painstakingly fashioned the image of an enemy out of Russia. Although in fact it was the alliance that created a threat to the security of our country. We have been warning our northern European neighbors that being drawn into the NATO orbit threatens to unbalance the European security system regularly and for quite some time. This is not "the topic of the last weeks".
I spoke about this in detail long before February 2022. Back in 2015, I warned: “Sweden’s accession to NATO would have military-political and foreign policy consequences that would require the necessary response steps from the Russian side.” In 2016, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that the accession of the Scandinavians to NATO would disrupt stability and change the balance of power in the region, forcing us to take additional measures to ensure our security. In 2018, we talked about the risks associated with the participation of Sweden and Finland in NATO's Trident Juncture exercise. I also touched on this topic, for example, at a briefing on December 24, 2021. The relevant material was published and most recently - in the light of the latest statements from the official Stockholm and Helsinki - on April 15 of this year.
We have always kept the topic of NATO on the agenda of our contacts with Finnish and Swedish partners. Thus, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia A.V. Grushko discussed it with the Ambassador of the Republic of Finland to the Russian Federation A. Helanteria in November 2020, etc. On the whole, we have been following the way the Americans and NATO's Brussels are progressively pulling the Scandinavians to the alliance's events for a very long time.
Please understand: geopolitical confrontation with Russia is the essence of NATO's existence. All talk about the defensive nature of this organization is fiction. NATO's efforts are aimed at radically changing the military-political situation in Europe, undermining the strategic balance of power and containing our country. If Finland and Sweden join the alliance, they will turn into a space for confrontation between the North Atlantic bloc and Russia, with all the ensuing consequences, including for our time-tested good neighborly relations. Is this what the peoples of Sweden and Finland are striving for?
Question: Aren't the negative consequences for Russia, including sanctions and losses on the battlefield, from the continuation of hostilities in Ukraine not much greater than the benefits?
Answer: We have said more than once that the start of the special operation was a necessary measure. We were left with no other choice. It is being carried out in order to stop the genocide of the inhabitants of the republics of Donbass, who have been living for eight years under the conditions of endless Ukrainian shelling, the deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of water, gas and electricity, banking, trade, and economic blockade. An equally important task of the special operation is to protect Russia itself from the threats that emanated from Ukrainian territory as a result of its military development by NATO countries and artificially pumped up Russophobia and hatred for everything connected with Russia.
Question: How do you see the future of Russian-Spanish relations in the current situation?
Answer: Of course, there is nothing good in the fact that many positive bilateral developments were canceled out by the decision of the Spanish authorities to join the anti-Russian sanctions. At the same time, Madrid did not stop exclusively at the economic component of the restrictions - two deliveries of weapons have already been made to Kyiv, incl. and lethal. A blow has been dealt to our diplomatic ties due to the Spaniards joining the campaign for the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats. Due to the short-sighted actions of the partners, a number of projects in the energy and transport sectors have been “suspended”, and the localization of Spanish textile production at Russian light industry enterprises is also questionable. The position of the Spanish side on the further development of cultural and humanitarian ties does not add any positive: it was decided to “freeze” cooperation in the field of science and education, including work on documents of a legal framework ready for signing.
We see that Spain, like many other countries, has actively joined the process of destroying everything that has been created in recent decades. One can only hope that the traditionally positive perception of the Russian world by the Spanish people will turn out to be much stronger than the current militant trend towards the destruction of the basis of bilateral relations, actively supported by official Madrid.
