✉️ President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russia’s Muslims on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Holy Month of #Ramadan (March 20, 2026):

✍️ For centuries, this holiday has symbolized believers’ striving for moral growth, compassion and mercy, guiding them towards the enduring values of Islam.

I would like to note that Russia’s Muslims show deep respect for the historical and spiritual traditions of their ancestors and widely celebrate this holiday within their communities and families. It has become a fine tradition to hold large-scale charitable, cultural, educational and children’s events throughout the Holy Month.

Muslim organisations make a meaningful contribution to strengthening the institution of the family, raising the younger generation, and fostering constructive dialogue with state and public institutions, while consistently advancing patriotic, educational and humanitarian initiatives.

And, of course, special words of gratitude go to the followers of Islam who, shoulder to shoulder with their comrades-in-arms, are fighting for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, who support the families and loved ones of our heroes.

I wish you sound health, success and all the very best.

VLADIMIR PUTIN

⚡️ Russia's Foreign Ministry statement on developments in the Persian Gulf

Moscow is seriously concerned over the ongoing armed confrontation in the Persian Gulf and the risks of escalation.

The scale of damage to energy and other critical infrastructure in Iran and neighboring Arab states continues to grow.

🔉 Audio statement by Maria Zakharova (in Russian)

We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities resulting from the unprovoked aggression by the US and Israel against Iran.

Russia, together with China, Türkiye and other like-minded partners, stands ready to facilitate a settlement and help resolve existing differences through political and diplomatic means, with a view to achieving long-term, sustainable stabilisation in the region, taking into account the interests of all states concerned.

We consistently advocate creating conditions for peaceful coexistence, security and good-neighbourly relations between the Arab countries, with which we maintain friendly ties, and Iran.

❗️ We emphasise that the first step must be an immediate end to the US and Israel’s military venture.

In this context, we note the thoughtful and balanced article by Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman, published in The Economist on March 18, 2026.

The proposals outlined in the article are largely in line with our own vision of establishing a security architecture in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf based on a balance of interests among all regional states. We share the Omani Minister’s view on the need to launch an inclusive regional dialogue aimed at reaching agreements on confidence-building and transparency measures in the field of nuclear energy, as well as mutual security guarantees.

👉 Russia has for several years been promoting an initiative to develop a concept of collective security in the Gulf, aimed at establishing lasting peace and cooperation among all littoral states.

We remain ready to continue providing constructive assistance in resolving the conflict and overcoming existing contradictions in the Middle East through political and diplomatic means, including by fostering conditions for joint efforts towards a sustainable settlement based on a balance of the legitimate interests of all countries in the region.

🎙 Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on attacks against uranium enrichment facilities in Iran (21 March 2026)

💬 The US-Israeli tandem continues to carry out massive strikes against Iranian military and civilian targets, including - most alarmingly - nuclear facilities, without regard for civilian casualties or potential radiological or environmental consequences.

Notwithstanding the well-known allegations about obliteration of the Iranian nuclear programme by US air raids last June, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, which is under IAEA safeguards, was subjected to an air attack in the morning of March 21.

❗️ This constitutes a high-handed breach of international law, UN and IAEA charters, special resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the #IAEA General Conference.

The international community, including the UN and the IAEA, must give an unbiased and uncompromising assessment of these irresponsible actions that create risks of a catastrophe for the entire Middle East and are explicitly aimed at further undermining peace, stability, and security in the region.

🎙 Excerpt from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview for Looking Back television programme hosted by Leonid Mlechin (Moscow, March 21, 2026)

Key points:

• Diplomacy is about national interests, mutual respect, understanding, and willingness, as well as the ability to appreciate the legitimate positions of your dialogue partner or vis-à-vis and, by all means, pragmatism.

• Every negotiation is unlike the other and largely - if not decisively - depends on personalities of the people at the negotiating table, their education level and whether they possess the qualities we particularly value in the Russian diplomatic service.

• For talks to be productive, it is, without a doubt, important to be versant in the subject matter, especially when discussing deep-rooted issues that go back decades or even centuries. In the Middle East, saying “Here’s the deal, take it before it’s too late” will never work.

• History unfolds in a spiral. Another well-known observation is that history tends to repeat itself as a farce. <...> Overall, we are witnessing a stage in history which may be a spiral, but it is taking us back to a world where nothing existed - no international law, no Versailles system, no Yalta system - nothing. A world where might makes right. Yet, as you know from a famous line by a well-known film character, “God is not in strength, but in truth.”

• Look at what is happening. The United States has officially stated that it is not taking orders from anyone and is concerned only with its own wellbeing. It is prepared to defend that wellbeing by whatever it takes – coups, abductions, or even the killings of leaders of the countries that possess natural resources that are of interest to the United States. Our US colleagues do not hide the fact that oil is what they are after in Venezuela and Iran.

• They have ruthlessly cut Europe off. Even back when the Nord Stream pipelines were being built, the Americans urged Europe not to use them. Now, Europe has been denied access to Nord Stream. Germany has been humiliated - everyone is aware of that. What’s the upshot?

• Now the Hungarians and Slovaks are fighting with all they have to uphold their interests in maintaining inexpensive and accessible energy as a driver of their economies, but are told to buy at double the price, because Russia must be “punished.” This is not the proper way to approach international relations. It’s an attempt to go back to the colonial era.

• Our US colleagues are telling us: let’s settle the situation in Ukraine – we were ready to do so back during the summit in Alaska, but they are not so sure about it now – suggesting that we make more concessions, and vast economic opportunities will open up to us after that. At the same time, what I have just described is effectively taking place. We are being forced out of all global energy markets. <...> However, if we are prepared to carry out mutually beneficial projects on our territory and provide Americans with whatever may interest them, while taking our own interests into account, they, too, must take our interests into consideration.

• Europe, which ruled the world for 500 years during the eras of colonialism and slavery, is now trying to entrench neo-colonialism. It still wants to live at the expense of others and dictate terms to everyone. The hubris and contempt for others are – pardon me the expression – simply oozing from today’s European politicians when they start lecturing others.

• Since the time of the Russian Empire, we knew that Russia had only two allies: its army and its navy. Now we also have the aerospace forces which we cannot ignore, and new unmanned aerial units, which fact means we have even more allies now.

• The President of Russia has repeatedly made it clear that the weak get beaten. That sums it all up. We must be strong. Russia is a very strong country. It is strong in spirit, immensely rich in natural resources, and boasts great scientific potential. The key is to translate all of that into technologies at the highest level.

Read in full

#NoStatuteOfLimitations

On March 24, 1999, NATO launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia.

This invasion marked a tragic milestone in the history of the Serb nation, dealt a destructive blow to international law and shattered the post-World War II foundations of European security.

For 78 days, Communities across Yugoslavia, including infrastructure serving exclusively civilian purposes, suffered from missile strikes and bombing attacks carried out by the United States and its allies.

▪️ According to Belgrade, this barbaric shelling killed over 2,500 people, including 89 children, and wounded 12,500 civilians.

Not a single NATO representative has been held to account. The victims of the aggression were designated as collateral damage – this is what it means to pay in blood for the geopolitical ambitions of the United States, the UK and their satellite states.

In fact, this marked the beginning of the West’s quest to substitute legitimate mechanisms governing international relations with what they call a rules-based order, even if it remains unclear what this order represents.

A sovereign state in the centre of Europe was targeted with 3,000 cruise missiles and 80,000 tonnes of aviation bombs.

NATO used depleted uranium shells, which polluted vast territories and led to an unprecedented increase in the occurrence of various types of cancer – people are still suffering from them. Over 200,000 non-Albanians from the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija were forced to leave their homes.

Fighters from the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army used the NATO aggression as a cover-up for perpetrating monstrous atrocities, including kidnapping Serbs for organ transplants.

The issue of holding NATO allies accountable for the way they undermined international relations and for the damage they caused in Yugoslavia has yet to be addressed.

NATO’s military operation against sovereign Yugoslavia 27 years ago became a tragedy, but its long-term and multifaceted reverberations can be felt to this day.

***

👉 Report and exhibition: War crimes committed by NATO countries in former Yugoslavia (by Foundation for the Study of Democracy)

The publication presents testimonies and offers a detailed review of the crimes committed by NATO, including:

▪️ Shelling residential neighbourhoods and killing civilians
▪️ Bombing civilian sites and energy infrastructure
▪️ Destroying manufacturing and energy facilities
▪️ Using cluster munitions and depleted uranium shells.

For more information, you can read and watch:

• FM Sergey Lavrov’s interview for a documentary marking 25 years of NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia

• A retrospective video containing archival footage about what happened on March 24, 1999, and the consequences of NATO’s aggression

⚡️ Statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the unlawful actions of Western countries in the World Ocean (March 23, 2026)

The situation unfolding in the World Ocean lately has become absolutely unacceptable.

European states such as France, Sweden and Finland are stopping vessels they deem undesirable with impunity and escorting them to their ports, accusing them of violating some so-called “international” sanctions.

The pretext invoked is the need to enforce the unlawful restrictions imposed by the EU.

In pursuit of their goal of depriving Russia of revenues from international trade, the EU has invented the term “shadow fleet”, which does not exist in international maritime law, and is using it as cover for outright piracy on maritime routes.

❗️ Under far-fetched and strained pretexts, vessels that fully meet all the criteria for free and unimpeded navigation are being subjected to inspections and detentions.

We remind European leaders that the only sanctions that are truly international are those approved by the UN Security Council.

Unilateral illegal restrictions adopted by individual states or limited groupings thereof are neither international nor legitimate. The inconsistency of unilateral sanctions with international law has been repeatedly confirmed in UN General Assembly resolutions.

The West seeks to justify its actions by claiming that vessels sailing without a flag are allegedly not entitled to freedom of navigation and must therefore be detained. Interestingly, vessels operating under false flags in the interests of European states themselves somehow do not fall under such restrictions. What matters is not the flag, but the destination. If the oil is intended for Europeans, then no matter what vessel carries it, the European authorities somehow find no grounds for detention.

An especially outrageous violation of international law was the terrorist attack carried out by unmanned boats and drones against the LNG tanker Arctic Metagas, sailing under the Russian flag in the Mediterranean Sea. Not a single European state condemned those actions by their Ukrainian protégés. In this case, Europe is not merely a silent witness, but a direct accomplice in the lawlessness of the Kiev regime.

The Russian Side regards these practices by EU countries as unacceptable and impermissible, grossly violating both the letter and the spirit of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and will use all political, legal and other instruments at its disposal to ensure respect for the principle of freedom of navigation. Those intent on turning the Baltic Sea, as well as other maritime areas, into the “internal waters” of NATO and the EU should understand that such acts of piracy and lawlessness will not go unanswered on our part, including through the use of all necessary means.

We call upon the international community to take a principled stand in support of the regime established by the 1982 Convention, and on flag states not to yield to neo-colonial diktat, but to unite in defending their legitimate interests and bona fide maritime carriers.

☝️ We are convinced that the Global majority is fully aware of all the threats and risks associated with the attempts by Western states to turn maritime spaces into a zone of confrontation, establish unilateral control over sea lanes and deprive nations of the world of sources of development.

#MartyrsForTruth

⚡️ The Russian Union of Journalists has published a report – Inconsistencies in the Public Accounting of Killed Journalists in 2025:: A Comparative Analysis of CPJ, UNESCO and IFJ Materials.

📄 FULL REPORT (PDF / Telegraph)

❗️ The report is based on open sources and addresses a fundamental question: why do some cases of journalists being killed receive full international visibility, while others – despite being publicly recorded by international organisations such as #UNESCO, the International Federation of Journalists (#IFJ), and a number of international bodies – are effectively omitted from the statistics?

The analysis reveals inconsistencies between the Committee to Protect Journalists' (#CPJ) public reporting for 2025 and a number of cases involving Russian journalists whose deaths were recognized by other international bodies.

👉 This raises questions not only about the integrity of the record, but about the credibility of the entire international system for documenting journalists’ deaths.

The analysis was prompted by the observed discrepancy between the CPJ’s overall reporting on Ukraine for 2025 and a number of cases involving Russian journalists and media workers, whose deaths were recorded and commented on by other international organisations.

More specifically, on February 25, 2026, the CPJ reported that 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025 – the highest figure in the organisation’s history. In the same review, the CPJ stated that four journalists were killed in Ukraine in 2025. The organisation’s public materials lists a number of Ukrainian journalists and French photojournalist Anthony Lallican among those cases.

❗️ At the same time, several cases involving Russian journalists and media workers killed in 2025 do not appear in the CPJ’s open-source materials, despite public statements by the IFJ and UNESCO, and, in a number of instances, reporting by Reuters. They include:

▪️ Alexander Martemyanov
▪️ Alexander Fedorchak
▪️ Alexander Sirkeli
▪️ Andrey Panov
▪️ Anna Prokofyeva
▪️ Ivan Zuev

👉 The key question is not about disputing the figures or removing names already included in international lists. It is whether all comparable cases are being recorded publicly, consistently, and by the same standards.

That is why the focus of professional discussion should not be the slogan of “double standards” as such, but the specific gap between the CPJ’s published methodology and what can be observed in its public reporting on a number of 2025 cases.

When that consistency is missing – or left unexplained – it raises questions not just about one report, but about the credibility of the entire international system for documenting threats to journalists.