Watch: Lavrov Smashes the Western World Order in UN Speech!

Full transcript follows. 

Madame President,

Colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are meeting at a both challenging and dramatic moment. Crisis situations are growing, and the international security situation is deteriorating rapidly.

Instead of engaging in honest dialogue and searching for compromises, we must deal with misinformation, as well as coarsely staged incidents and provocations. The policy line adopted by the West undermines trust in international institutions, which are tasked with coordinating various interests and international law as a guarantee of fairness to protect the weak from arbitrary rule. We are witnessing these negative trends in their quintessential form here in the United Nations, which rose from the rubble of German fascism and Japanese militarism and was established to promote friendly relations among its members and to prevent conflict among them.

The future world order is being decided today, as any unbiased observer can clearly see. The question is whether this world order will have a single hegemon that forces everyone else to live by its infamous rules, which only benefit this hegemon and no one else. Or whether this will be a democratic and just world free from blackmail and intimidation against the unwanted, as well as free from neo-Nazism and neo-colonialism. Russia firmly opts for the second option. Together with our allies, partners, and like-minded countries, we call for efforts to make this a reality.

The unipolar global development model, which served the golden billion who for centuries had been fuelling its excessive consumption by relying on Asian, African, and Latin American resources, is receding into the past. Today, with the emergence of sovereign states that are ready to stand up for their national interests, an equal, socially-minded and sustainable multipolar architecture is taking shape. However, Washington and the ruling elites in Western countries that have fully submitted themselves to this rule have been viewing these objective geopolitical processes as a threat to their dominance.

The United States and its allies want to stop the flywheel of history. Having declared itself victorious in the Cold War at some point in the past, Washington elevated itself almost to the rank of the messenger of the Lord God on Earth, endowed with no obligations, but only sacred rights to act with impunity wherever it wants. Any state can become the next target for such actions, especially if this state displeases the self-proclaimed masters of the world in some manner. Everyone remembers how wars of aggression were unleashed under far-fetched pretexts against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, in which hundreds of thousands of deaths were claimed among civilians. Were the West’s legitimate interests at stake in any one of these countries? Have they banned English or languages of other NATO member states, or Western media, or culture? Have they labelled Anglo-Saxons as subhuman or used heavy weapons against them? What were the outcomes of the reckless undertaking by the United States in the Middle East? Have they helped improve the human rights situation or promote the rule of law? Have they helped stabilise the socioeconomic situation or improve the people’s livelihoods? Name a country where life has changed for the better following Washington’s forceful intervention.

In its attempts to revive the unipolar model under the label of a rules-based order, the West has been imposing dividing lines everywhere, following the logic a of bloc-based confrontation where you either with us or against us. There is no third option available or compromises. The United States persisted with its irrational policy to expand NATO to the east and bring its military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders. Now the US wants to subjugate Asia. At the June NATO Summit in Madrid this self-proclaimed defensive alliance, announced the indivisibility of security for the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific region. Closed frameworks are being created as part of the Indo-Pacific strategies, which undermine ASEAN’s open and inclusive regional architecture that has taken shape over decades. Building on all these developments, they decided to play with fire regarding Taiwan, even promising it military support.

Clearly, the notorious Monroe Doctrine is becoming global in scope. Washington is trying to turn the entire globe into its own backyard while it uses illegal unilateral sanctions as a tool for coercing those who disagree. For many years now, these unilateral sanctions have been imposed in violation of the UN Charter and used as a tool for political blackmail. The cynicism of this practice is obvious. The restrictions take a toll on ordinary people, preventing them from accessing basic goods, including medicines, vaccines, and food. The blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than 60 years now is one such egregious example. For quite some time now, the UN General Assembly by an overwhelming majority has been demanding with great resolve that this blockade be immediately lifted. The Secretary-General, whose duties include facilitating the implementation of the General Assembly resolutions, must pay special attention to this problem. He also has a special role to play when it comes to mobilising efforts to overcome the food and energy crises that have resulted from uncontrolled money printing in the United States and the EU during the pandemic, as well as the European Union’s irresponsible and unprofessional actions on hydrocarbon markets. Defying the most basic common sense, Washington and Brussels compounded the situation by declaring an economic war against Russia. This resulted in higher global prices of food, fertiliser, oil, and gas. We welcome efforts by the Secretary-General, who helped broker the July 22, 2022, Istanbul Agreements. However, these agreements must be carried out. So far, most of the ships carrying Ukrainian grain have not been directed to the poorest countries, while the United States and the EU have yet to fully remove the financial and logistical obstacles that prevent Russia from exporting its grain and fertiliser. We have been saying for several weeks that 300,000 tonnes of fertiliser have been held up at European ports and have been proposing to ship them free of charge to the African countries that need them, but the European Union has not responded.

Official Russophobia has taken on unprecedented and grotesque dimensions in the West. They do not have the scruples anymore to declare their intention to not only defeat our country militarily, but also to destroy and fracture Russia. In other words, they want a geopolitical entity that is too independent to disappear from the world’s political map.

How have Russia’s actions over the past decades actually infringed upon the interests of its opponents? Could it be that they cannot forgive us because it is the position of our country that made the military and strategic detente possible in the 1980s and 1990s? Or that we voluntarily dissolved the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, depriving NATO of its raison d’etre? Or that we supported Germany’s reunification without any conditions and contrary to the positions of London and Paris? That we withdrew our armed forces from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and recognised the independence of the former Soviet republics? That we believed the promises by the Western leaders that they would not expand NATO to the east by a single inch, and when this process started, we agreed to basically legitimise it by signing the Russia-NATO Founding Act? Could it be that we infringed on the West’s interests when we warned it that bringing its military infrastructure closer to our border would be unacceptable to us?

With the end of the Cold War, Western arrogance and American exceptionalism have taken on an especially destructive nature. Back in 1991, US Under Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz frankly acknowledged during a conversation with NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark that after the end of the Cold War they could use their military as they pleased… and that they have five or maybe ten years to clear out surrogate Soviet regimes like Iraq and Syria before a new superpower emerges to challenge them. I am certain that one day we will learn from someone’s memoires how the United States built its Ukraine policy. However, Washington’s plans are already obvious.

Could it be that they cannot forgive us for supporting, at the request of the United States and the European Union, the agreement reached between then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition to resolve the February 2014 crisis? Germany, France, and Poland guaranteed these agreements, but the next morning the leaders of the government coup trampled upon them, humiliating the European mediators. The West simply shrugged and looked on in silence as the putschists started bombing eastern Ukraine where people refused to accept the government coup. They looked on when those behind the coup elevated Nazi accomplices involved in atrocious ethnic cleansings against Russians, Poles, and Jews during World War II to the rank of national heroes. Did we have to sit idly in the face of Kiev’s policy to impose a total ban on the Russian language, education, the Russian media and culture, its insistence that Russians be expelled from Crimea, and when it declared war against Donbass? The authorities in Kiev back then, as well as the current leadership, have designated these people as creatures, not people – this is what we hear from the country’s most senior official. How could we tolerate this?

Or maybe Russia interfered with Western interests when it played a key role in stopping the hostilities unleashed by Kiev neo-Nazis in eastern Ukraine, and then insisted that the Minsk Package of Measures be implemented, as approved unanimously by the UN Security Council in February 2015, but then buried by Kiev with the direct involvement of the United States and the European Union?

For many years, we have been repeatedly offering to agree on the rules for co-existence in Europe based on the principles of equal and indivisible security as set forth at the highest level in the OSCE documents. Under this principle, no one can seek to reinforce one’s security at the expense of the security of others. The last time we came forward with a proposal to work out legally binding agreements to this effect was in December 2021, but all we got in response was an arrogant refusal.

Considering the inability of the Western countries to engage in talks, and the fact that the Kiev regime was continuing the war against its own people, we were left with no choice but to recognise the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and launch a special military operation to protect Russians and other people in Donbass, while also removing threats to our own security, which NATO has been consistently creating on Ukrainian territory, and which is de facto right on our border. This operation is being carried out in execution of the treaties of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance reached between Russia and these republics under Article 51 of the UN Charter. I am certain that in this situation any sovereign, self-respecting state that realises the responsibility it has to its own people would do the same.

The West is now in a temper tantrum over the referendums in Ukraine’s Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions. However, people there are simply reacting to the advice from the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky. In one of his interviews in August 2021, he advised all those who consider themselves Russians to leave for Russia for the benefit of their children and grandchildren. This is what people living in the regions I have mentioned are doing, taking the land where their ancestors had lived for centuries with them.

It is obvious to any unbiased observer that for the Anglo-Saxons who have completely subjugated Europe, Ukraine is merely an expendable material in their fight against Russia. NATO declared that our country poses an immediate threat to the United States in its quest for total dominance, while designating the People’s Republic of China as a long-term strategic challenge. At the same time, the collective West, led by Washington, is sending intimidating signals to all other countries without exception: anyone who disobeys can be the next in line.

One of the consequences of the crusade declared by the West against unwanted regimes is that multilateral institutions are declining at an ever-increasing pace. The United States and its allies use these institutions as tools for achieving their selfish interests. This is the approach they have been sticking to in the United Nations, its Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and other multilateral associations. The OPCW has been de facto privatised. There are fierce attempts to undermine efforts to set up a mechanism as part of the Biological Weapons Convention to ensure the transparency of hundreds of military biological programmes the Pentagon has around the world, including along Russian borders and across Eurasia. Irrefutable evidence discovered on Ukrainian territory demonstrates that these programmes are far from innocuous.

(The transcript is not finished, so what follows is the crappy speech to text thing.)

This is irrefutable according
to the fact that we came to in Ukraine
there is an assertive line to privatize
the U.S Secretariat to introducing it
into its work at neoliberal narrative
which ignores the cultural and
civilizational multifaceted nature of
the world we can call upon making sure
that we follow the charter and ensure a
fair geographical representation of
member states making sure that there is
no one single country dominant in the
Secretariat an impossible situation was
created by Washington having to do with
the obligation of the host country of a
headquarters agreement to ensure that
normal conditions for the participation
of all member states in U.N work the
obligations under this host country
agreement are also placed on the
Secretary General and inactivity is
unacceptable we’re also concerned by the
efforts made by countries who are
undermining the prerogatives of Security
Council and of course the council in U.N
have to be Allied to contemporary
realities we see the prospect of making
the security Council more democratic
exclusively exclusively through
broadening the representation of the
countries from Africa Asia and Latin
America we know to India and Brazil in
particular as key International actors
and worthy candidates for permanent
membership within the council whilst at
the same time unilaterally and
mandatorily raising the profile of
Africa it is very important today to
make sure that all member states
unequivocally without reservations
reaffirm their commitment to the
purposes and principles of the charter
as a first and necessary step to restore
Collective responsibility for the fate
of humankind and that was the reason why
in July 2021 a group of friends to
support the charter was created and
co-sponsor of the group was Russia and
it now counts to 20 countries
the goal here is to make sure that there
is stricter abiding to with the
universal Norms of international law to
counter balance unilateral approaches
and where you call call upon everyone to
join in and in this context a great
potential is possessed by such
organizations as the non-aligned
movement breaks SEO and asean the
Western colleagues are very aggressive
at imposing their understanding of
democracy as a way of organizing uh life
to all countries categorically do not
want to be guided by Democratic Norms in
international Affairs and very good
example the situation in Ukraine again
it would seem to be that Russia
Justified its position has been
justifying it for years and the rest
said they disagree okay well let other
members of the International Community
decide for themselves what their
position would be on the side of one on
the side of others or neutral that’s
what happens in democracies when
politicians opposing each other defend
their viewpoints and try to
convey to others by the United States
and allies do not give the freedom of
choice to anyone they threaten to twist
the arms of anyone who dares think for
themselves and demand by threats that
countries join in with anti-russian
sanctions that doesn’t work very well
but it is very clear that these acts by
United States and its satellites is not
democracy it’s pure unadulterated
dictatorship or an attempt to impose it
we’re left with a strong impression that
the Washington and subjugated Europe are
trying to keep their disappearing
hegemony using
prohibited means diplomacy constantly is
being replaced by illegal sanctions
against competitors in economic sports
information area culture and generally
in contacts with people let’s uh turn to
the to the problem with visas for
delegates for international meetings in
New York Geneva Vienna and Paris they’re
also we see the desire to remove
competition make sure that alternative
viewpoints do not come into multilateral
discussions
I am convinced that we need to protect
the U.N and scrape everything that
confrontational and superficial from
there and give it back its reputation
and an honest platform to a siege for
balance for all member states and this
is the approach that we’re guided up
when we put forward our national
initiatives it is of principal
importance to make sure that we have a
comprehensive comprehensive ban on the
deployment of weapons in space and this
is a reason for the russia-china draft
International treaty considered by the
conference on disarmament
um it’s particularly important to
protect our cyberspace within the
open-ended working group of the general
assemblies assembly on the agreements on
how to protect International Security
and to use a special committee for
Universal convention on how to counter
the use of ICT for criminal purposes we
continue support supporting office
encounter terrorism and neither
anti-terrorist entities within the U.N
and we go to continue
um develop relationships between the
uncsto a European Eurasian economic
Union CIS
so is to pull our efforts in a greater
Eurasia
we call for a an enhanced work on
overcoming Regional conflicts we think
that the priority here is to overcome
the impasse in creating an independent
Palestinian State restoring
um which was
restoring the state of Iraq and Libya
destroyed by NATO aggression neutralize
the threats to Syria
um having a sustainable process of
national
um
conciliation in Yemen overcoming the
heavy burden of NATO presence in
Afghanistan and we are working on
restoring the original jcpoa on Iran a
nuclear program ensuring the
comprehensive settlement on the Korean
Peninsula many complex situations in
Africa require that we reject the
temptation to play a zero-sum game then
con then that outside players
consolidate
on the around the initiatives by the air
for um African Union we are concerned by
the situation and cost of a Bosnia
Herzegovina where the United States and
EU are stubbornly leading to the
destruction of the international legal
basis uh as we currently have it in
resolution 12 to 44 and the date and
peaceful agreement
Madam president at times unlike these
it’s natural to seek wisdom from our
predecessors so in the pithy expression
of the former Secretary General Doug
hamashold who remembered the horrors of
world war he said and I quote the U.N
wasn’t created to take mankind to
Paradise but rather to save Humanity
from Hell these are very topical words
they call upon us to understand our
individual Collective responsibility for
creating conditions for a peaceful and
harmonious development for our future
generation generations and everyone need
to show political will for that when
we’re ready for such honest work and we
are convinced that the stability of the
world order can be ensured is
exclusively through returning to the
origins of the U.N diplomacy basing
ourselves on the key principle of true
democracy the respect for The Sovereign
equality of States I thank you
I thank the minister for foreign affairs
of the Russian Federation