Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Maria Zakharova: Michael, may I speak? And
you will listen to me attentively as I listened to you.
Maria Zakharova. Best Moments.
Zakharova: I just wanted to say that you need
to understand that these videos are from the country
whose leaders say that their state was attacked.
Can you imagine that people of a country that
is at war, as they think, would conduct a war against
each other in such an inept way?
Ukrainian people, citizens of the Ukraine,
either in Kiev, or those who live in other cities,
and those who are hiding from mobilization,
since there are many of them hiding in Russia,
including the Moscow region. It's not funny.
It's true.
"I confirm that as I live in the Moscow region."
Zakharova: I want all these people to think,
you are a proud nation, proud people,
maybe you don't like Russia, I can understand that,
but how can you let these people have control
over you? They don't want anything except for money,
and at the moment when the country should
come together and find a solution, they share money,
gas and some other resources left with this unlucky country.
You are the MFA's representative, don't you
know that OSCE concluded that the shooting came
from the territory under the control of gunmen...
Zakharova: I believe you may understand this deep
inside yourself, and maybe it's hard for you to accept that.
The problem is that you and the leaders of official Kiev
do one and the same thing all the time:
you always pick out a single fact from this huge range
of colors and bring it up for universal discussion
as evidence proving that your party is right.
You need to understand one thing, that if you
speak about the things going on in Mariupol,
happening now, you also need to remember
the events we had in Mariupol last year.
And if your president goes to Davos with
a piece of the Volnovakha bus, then in the other hand -
it's not funny - he needs to have a brick from
the Odessa Trade Union House blackened on May 2.
And he should show the world community that
the citizens of the Ukraine died in this trolley bus,
and our boys and girls are also buried under these bricks.
And only then your country, that we hope
will remain forever, and as we always say,
it has a chance for peace only if
you stop dividing people, standing on this
or that side of a boundary, into us and them.
Your people are the same, and maybe they
no longer want to be yours. But if you
think that it's your common country,
you need to listen to these people, respect
them and sit down for talks with them.
Zakharova: I think that the dispute we are
having now are caused by one really big
problem: the substitution of two notions.
The first are the results of World War II, which
were once registered by the Nuremberg trials.
Just think how strong those political mastodons
were, representing totally different systems and,
of course, hating each other, but who took
an unprecendented step: international trials.
Why? To register the results of World War II,
not only in the instrument of surrender, and
not only in the course of political declarations,
but to enshrine them in international law.
That's the first thing. And it clearly says -
just a second, please! It clearly states
who was right and who was to blame.
And the second thing is that it's confused with -
with the second half of the 20th century.
When we and the Soviet Army, of course
brought no liberation - we didn't liberate anyone.
Do you know what we did do?
We brought life. And that is enshrined
in international law. The substitution of these
two notions makes our dispute so hot.
When we separate these two notions and
start to analyze WWII within the conventional
frameworks and then tell honestly about the
history of the 20th century: who did what
to whom, only then maybe we won't "dance
on the monuments of the murderers".
Zakharova: Let's be exact, you keep saying that
somebody doesn't let somebody start a dialog.
And this is Moscow, right? You said that?
"America. You're saying it's America".
Zakharova: Well, let's start. There is the 10th report
of the United Nations Observer Human Rights
Mission in the Ukraine that you have actively cited.
It says about the charges including violation
of human rights and all other. Now we are
going to focus on - let me speak!
"I'm just asking..."
Zakharova: Otherwise, you are going
to see what Russian Grad missiles actually are.
"Whoa!"
Zakharova: As for Kiev, I mean not
the self-appointed one, but the leaders
of official Kiev who are welcomed in European
capitals, shook hands with and invited to
summits. There are the following claims:
on implementation of a special regime of entry
and exit from the conflict area concerning
the movement of the displaced population,
work of NGOs, delivery of humanitarian assistance.
That's only half of the problem. Economic
blockade of Kiev, default from obligations
on pensions, salaries, implementation
of emergency situation regime.
But the most interesting - listen, it's a direct quote:
Kiev is accused of "hideous tortures, human
abuse, kidnaping, illegal detention".
Moreover, the armed forces and State Security
Service of Ukraine are directly accused of
"extrajudicial killing" and that there was no
investigation carried out on
all these cases. The next: "human trafficking
in the Ukraine considerably increased..."
"Who wrote this? General Assembly or UN Committee?"
Zakharova: I've already told you -
are you actually listening to me?
"Answer me, whose document is this?"
It's the 10th report of the United Nations
Observer Human Rights Mission in the Ukraine.
Human trafficking: "lately there were 230
cases of forced displacement of people,
mostly of young women and also disabled
and elderly people who are forced into begging".
Then "degradation of freedom of speech
and situation with the media, assaults on journalists,
charging them with treason, and also the killing of Buzina,
ban on Russian media" - all this is in this report.
The next: "declaring Russia to be an aggressor
resulted in the illegal prosecution of Russian
citizens in the Ukraine". The next is related
to the laws on the banning of Nazi communist
ideology recently adopted in the Ukraine.
According to the UN, all these laws
contradict existing human rights principles.
All this is in the document. It's not a document?
Then now we are not here at this program.
"We have a prosecutor here".
Zakharova: I'd like to add two phrases.
First, you said: "let's think together".
We're actually saying the same. But
I'm sure that only those people who can "think"
are able to accept a different point of view.
That you failed to show here today - unfortunately.
One more thing, talking about European values -
the economic example Europe shows to the Ukraine
and so on, saying that the Ukraine went on the wrong
path by looking up to Russia with its corruption
and oligarchs and so on. I believe all that
happened to the Ukraine two years ago, besides
the events which we call tragic and war,
was a huge test of the internal readiness of this
country to those positive changes that it set itself.
And now we're watching whether
the country passed it or not.
Because it wasn't possible even to imagine such
a throwback from the values that you wanted to reach.
Zakharova: They intend to complicate the economic situation
in Russia to make hungry Russians take to the streets.
Let me speak not as a representative of the MFA or diplomat
but as an ordinary person. They made a different mistake:
they miscalculated, not knowing that we already were starving.
We faced hunger numerous times in the course of our history.
Me personally, I was starving... I'm privileged
to be here today because there is Anatoly Torkunov,
the man that presented me with a student ID
in 1993 when I entered the university.
And when I entered this university I saw,
not at once though, but year after year
I began to notice what enormous efforts
the directors of the university applied to keep
this huge vessel afloat. You won't believe that.
I'm not ashamed to talk about that.
We had meal tickets. I don't know
whether you remember that or not.
It was a five-centimeter piece of paper.
We used them because we didn't have money.
We were not able to pay or somehow compensate
for it because we all were practically poor.
Those students who got good grades received meal tickets.
And that was students of Moscow State
Institute of International Affairs! You may not
believe me but some may remember.
Those who didn't experience the same, or
our American colleagues, won't believe
that every day we came to university and
found out that one or other student among
those I studied with had a family
member who was killed. A girl who came from
Tyumen lost someone in her family.
A girl from Moscow also lost someone.
They can't intimidate us with hunger.
We are only afraid of the understanding that
we can experience such chaos once again.
It was a hideous time.
And they counted on us not being able
to put up with that. But we suffered so much
that we would rather tolerate hunger,
which we face now as they think, but we
will never return to the chaos of mid 1990s,
when such people carried out on their shoulders
infrastructure, education, science and state services.
Can we tolerate hunger? We can, by any means.
But we won't accept to return to this hideous time.
"There won't be any hunger". "Of course".
Zakharova: You seemed to confuse it all.
On the one hand you are saying that there is
the Russian Army fighting for the separatists.
On the other hand you are saying that the
official armed forces of Kiev don't face any defeat,
that on the contrary they are conducting attacks.
Can you actually imagine what would happen to
the armed forces of the Ukraine if the
Russian Army really were fighting against them?
Do you actually understand what you are talking about?
And you still consider yourselves experts?
Zakharova: I just want to say that on January 21st -
these are facts, not the things you are saying,
this is a fact - on January 21st a United States
Army lieutenant general, the US Army Europe
commander Ben Hodges, presented injured Ukrainian
soldiers with US military medals at a hospital in Kiev.
Where in the world do we actually live in?
It appears that the US treats the armed forces
of the Ukraine as in fact a mercenary army.
Do you know what that medal is?
And when it was created?
'A medal".
Do you know when it was invented?
"Tell us, please".
Zakharova: It was created during the Vietnam War.
They must hate the whole nation and
its armed forces so much to humiliate them
by giving them such medals.
Back then they were given to soldiers because
their feat did not warrant an award by the state.
They must want to humiliate the whole nation...