❗️ Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing Following the Attack on Starobelsk (May 22, 2026)

💬 Today we have convened an emergency UNSC meeting in connection to yet another horrific terrorist attack perpetrated by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime against Russian civilians.

In the early hours of May 22, the Ukrainian army used four fixed-wing drones to launch a targeted strike on the administrative buildings and dormitory of the Starobelsk College of the Lugansk State Pedagogical University.

According to existing reports, at the time of the incident, there were 86 students aged 14 to 18 and one staff member in the dormitory building. As a result, the five-story building collapsed down to the second floor. As of 3 p.m., it has been confirmed that six people have died, and more than 40 children have been wounded to varying degrees.

Unfortunately, that number is likely to rise. A number of children are in critical condition and remain in hospital, with the search for missing people going on: there are still children buried under the rubble. <...>

Thus, this was a deliberate strike targeting a civilian facility where children live and study; this strike was carried out at nighttime when the dormitory was full, and it was clearly perpetrated with the aim of incurring the highest possible number of casualties. Under international humanitarian law, this constitutes a war crime.

By no means could this have been an accidental strike: there were three waves of drones that hit the same location. Neither could the UAV strike on the college have been the result of air defense or radio electronic warfare, as was immediately claimed by Kiev. None of those inside the building were or could have been taking part in hostilities, and there are no military facilities in the vicinity of the college. This was an attack targeting sleeping children, and this is yet another testament to the craven, terrorist, and anti-human nature of the Kiev regime: it is sustaining losses on the battlefield and hitting in agony what is the most sacred, with the West turning a blind eye to these crimes and covering them up.

Furthermore, this clearly attests to the bad faith and unwillingness to negotiate on the part of Kiev, which –  acting with the connivance of its Western sponsors – not only fails to embrace a peaceful resolution but is openly sabotaging it.

Such strikes using long-range weapons supplied to the Kiev regime by NATO countries – including UAVs – are being carried out with technical assistance from foreign specialists from well-known NATO States. We have verifiable information that Western capitals are providing the Ukrainian armed forces with intelligence and assisting them with targeting. <...>

The Kiev neo-Nazi regime has never ceased its attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure of our country, using cruise missiles and long-range rocket artillery supplied by Western countries. Officials on Bankovaya Street openly express joy when women, children, and the elderly die, and when residential buildings and social facilities are hit.

In April alone, at least 100 civilians (including 8 children) were killed as a result of criminal acts by Ukrainian militants, and 667 people, including 34 minors, were injured. Over the past week, 234 Russian citizens have been affected by constant shelling and drone strikes by Ukrainian nationalists. Of them, 203 people were wounded, including 18 children, and 31 people were killed, including 2 children. <...>

We call on international organizations, national governments, and the global community to give a frank assessment of the criminal actions by the Zelensky regime and to strongly condemn the bloody terrorist attack in Starobelsk. Silence would be tantamount to complicity in the brutal acts by the Kiev terrorists and indifference to the plight of all innocent children who were murdered and injured.

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🎙 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 34th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (Moscow, May 23, 2026)

💬 There are so many familiar faces here. This serves as a reminder that we have been working together for several decades now. The interactions between the community of political scientists and the official diplomacy have consisted in searching for and adopting ideas coming from the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy since its creation. They have never gone unnoticed and would either serve as a foundation for major initiatives or advised against certain actions. This is not very common, if we are talking about the way our political research and academic institutions and entities operate.

The Council on Foreign and Defence Policy’s Chair, Fyodor Lukyanov, mentioned a report. I can confirm that it is a very useful document. It offers a lot of food for thought, including an idea that has been becoming increasingly prominent in the public space and boils down to the question whether what we are experiencing today amounts to a new world war.

Some are putting forward arguments proving that this is the case. There are also qualitative indicators demonstrating that the nature of military action has changed to an extent that it can be argued that military action has evolved so much that we must describe the ongoing developments as a war of a radically new kind. This is what we learned from the report by the President of the Association for the Export of Technological Sovereignty, MGIMO Professor Andrey Bezrukov.

As for whether this war unfolds on a global scale, I am certain that we will discuss this today. It is already in full swing in Eurasia. The West staged an aggression in Ukraine against Russia in what amounted to yet another attempt to weaken our country and to ensure that it does not have a place among the key global actors. They followed up by launching the operation in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz. There were border clashes in the southern and eastern parts of the Asian continent, and I am not even mentioning Latin America, where there are so many outstanding issues, as we all know.

This goes to say that we are dealing with a global and universal scale. It will be up to future historians to conclude whether any of these elements and conflicts in terms of their intensity, once we combine them, can be described as a world war. <...>

Here is one conclusion I wanted to highlight. There has been much talk lately, even if not everyone agrees on this point, that we must make sure not to lose our positions on one continent or another, across one ocean or elsewhere overseas since the West is trying to steal our allies. This primarily deals with our neighbours, which was the case with Georgia, Moldova, and this is currently happening with Ukraine. They are trying to place Armenia on the same erroneous path. Their single goal consists of hurting Russia as much as possible, or, if I may say so, make it harder for Russia to retain and reinforce its standing as a truly great power and civilisation.

We have been working a lot in Africa, of course, and restoring our embassies there. This is an imperative for us. But when we talk about the need to strengthen Russia’s influence around the world and to make it more attractive as a civilisation, a partner and a comrade who always delivers on its commitments, our only goal capable of strengthening our influence is to achieve the objectives of the special military operation. Our friends, neighbours and our adversaries and enemies are all keeping a close eye on the way it unfolds.

Therefore, the primary task for our diplomacy consists in doing everything we can to create the necessary conditions for ensuring that the actions by our troops as part of the special military operation are effective, victorious and yield tangible results. <...>

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