🇷🇺 President Vladimir #Putin:

💬 #RussiaDay marks the continuity of the many centuries of our history, the glory and grandeur of our Fatherland, the unity of our multi-ethnic people, our loyalty to our country and our cordial affection for our beloved Motherland.

Read in full👉https://is.gd/aAGbDC

🎙️ Statement by the Head of Delegation of the Russian Federation, G20 Sous-Sherpa Marat Berdyev at the G20 Development Ministers Meeting, session 1 «Multilateralism - Collective Actions for Accelerating Progress towards SDGs» (Varanasi, June 12)

💬 We thank #India for its hospitality, ambition, passion and dedication in leading this year.

🤝 We appreciate the Indian Presidency for its tremendous efforts to move forward the issue of development with a holistic approach that provides for synergies amongst development, growth, climate and environment.

We commend and support the practical results to accelerate progress on SDGs that includes 2023 Action Plan and a set of principles on data for development as well as sustainable lifestyles. They give thoughtful ideas on possible ways to speed up progress on the SDGs realization as we face multiple headwinds.

☝️ We welcome Indian Presidency for getting us there and profoundly regret that the inclusion of Bali geopolitical paragraphs under the pressure by the West rendered the whole document a chair’s statement and call to name it subsequently. We completely disassociate ourselves with any reference to its status as a common outcome and the mentioned paragraphs and request this dissent to be highlighted in the document if the title is presented otherwise.

On the linkage of climate and development, we share the need for CO2 emission reduction and removals and stress the need to employ all viable options and technologies while refraining from raising unfair trade barriers or risking the pace of economic development. We must make sure that no one is left behind and at the same time targeted support is provided to the poorest.

☝️ Climate and environment goals can only be attained if enhanced access to climate finance is provided at affordable terms as an additional source available in particular for developing countries. We call on developed countries to fulfill their outstanding commitments in this regard of no less than 100 bln USD per year. This pledge has long been overdue on the backdrop of massive sponsorship of warmongering activities by the West.

Adequate and timely finance, transfer and deployment of technologies and solutions that avoid, abate and remove GHG emissions as well as enhanced adaptation action are essential. In this regard we recall the important role of suitable solutions and cleaner energy sources such as natural gas, hydrogen and nuclear.

COVID pandemic and mounting geopolitical tensions took a heavy toll on the developing countries’ abilities to respond to the current economic and climate challenges. The situation kept aggravating by shortcomings within the current model of global economic governance. We have recently witnessed how the reserve currencies’ issuers injected the ailing economy with cash windfall, spiraling inflation and creating serious disproportions on financial markets.

Moreover, the world had to adjust to rapidly changing geopolitical environment. The unwillingness of the Western countries to discuss mutual security guarantees, economic wars they had unleashed amidst attempts to shift primary responsibility for the degradation of international relations to other states, including Russia is quite worrisome. It reveals strong intention by the West to resist a multipolar world and the primacy of the UN Charter, trying to replace them with their own unilateral rules.

❗ We are concerned by cases of weaponization of economy by the West, in particular in areas of food and energy security through price ceilings, misuse of value chains, seizure of foreign assets, like Russian fertilizers capturing by the EU. The new wave of large-scale threats emerges from terrorist attacks/war crimes of Kiev regime and its accomplices against critical civil infrastructure. These outrageous acts of sabotage include explosions of Crimean Bridge, North Stream gas pipelines, Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline and Khahovka hydropower dam that inflict enormous humanitarian damage, material and environmental disaster.

We are convinced that a dialogue between sovereign states based on mutual respect and equality is a prerequisite for implementing the 2030 Agenda and achieving the SDGs. Developing countries need to strengthen ownership over their natural resources and have a full right to decide over national economic policies. The BRICS members work hard to source investments for development and ensure transactions in national currencies.

🇷🇺 Russia supports developing countries as a donor at an amount of about 1,4 bln USD per year and serves as a major supplier of food, fertilizers and energy. We will be hosting 2nd Russia-Africa Summit on July 26-29 in Saint-Petersburg to foster our cooperation and look forward for the African Union membership at the G20. Our country also endeavors to implement the Greater Eurasian Partnership underpinned by closer relationships between Eurasian Economic Union, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (#SCO) and #ASEAN.

As the #UN 2023 SDGs Summit this September is approaching Russia hopes for the #G20 strong contribution to its success by emphasizing our commitment to build a truly multilateral system based on the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and encompassing the interests of the world majority. Our ultimate goal should be to provide a level playing field in international trade, investment and financing, eliminating any form of discrimination including unilateral sanctions, boycotts, blockades and embargoes.

🔗 https://is.gd/HEFXeY

Today we celebrate the 240th anniversary of the glorious and heroic Russian city of Sevastopol.

🗓 The city of Sevastopol was founded on June 14, 1783 under the leadership of Rear Admiral Thomas MacKenzie, ℹ️ However, in fairness, one cannot fail to mention Alexander Suvorov in this regard. Five years earlier, by his order, the first ground works were built and Russian troops were deployed on the shores of the present-day Sevastopol Bay.

ℹ️ Originally the settlement was called Akhtiar. The city received its modern name on February 21, 1784. On that day, Catherine II issued a decree ordering Grigory Potemkin to build a large fortress in its place and call it Sevastopol (that is, the sacred city). The city was built with funds received by Potemkin from Novorossiysk lands. Administratively, Sevastopol became part of the Tauride region, formed as part of the Yekaterinoslav governorship, the center of which was Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk).
Sevastopol became a stronghold of the Black Sea Fleet, a city of glory for Russian naval sailors. Nowadays, the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation is located in Sevastopol.

Implementation of the initial scheme for the construction of the city was undertaken by Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, who was appointed in 1788 as the commander of the port and the Sevastopol squadron.

Upon ascending to the throne in 1797, Emperor Paul I took many actions just to spite his mother Catherine the Great, including renaming the fortress city to Akhtiar. However, in 1826, under Nicholas I, the city was returned its former Greek name, Sevastopol, by Senate decree.
In 1853, Turkey declared war on Russia, and a few months later England and France entered into a military alliance with Turkey, as they did not want Russia to strengthen its dominance in the Black Sea. During the Crimean War, Sevastopol underwent a prolonged siege (349 days) and was abandoned by the defenders after the enemy took the key height, Malakhov Mound. The war was followed by a 20-year period of decline for Sevastopol, since under the terms of the peace treaty signed in 1856, Russia was prohibited from having a navy in the Black Sea.

The restoration of the fleet began in 1870, and by the First World War there were up to 400 combat, auxiliary and transport ships in Sevastopol.

During the Soviet period, despite the aftermath of the Civil War, the city developed rapidly, and its population doubled over 20 years. By the beginning of 1941, 112,000 people lived in the city.

Sevastopol had become a powerful naval base, but the Great Patriotic War tested the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and ordinary Sevastopol residents unlike anything that came before. The heroic defense of Sevastopol lasted 250 days, with Soviet troops withdrawing from the city only after exhausting all defensive resources. On May 9, 1944, the city was liberated after being almost completely destroyed by the Nazis.

❗️ On March 6, 2014, the decision was made at an extraordinary session of the Sevastopol City Council to rejoin the Russian Federation and support the decision of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to hold an all-Crimea referendum in which the city would take part.

On March 16, 96.77% of voters on the peninsula voted for reunification with Russia in the referendum. In Sevastopol, the number was 95.6%.

On March 18, 2014, an agreement was signed on the accession of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol into the Russian Federation as constituent entities.

Russian Foreign Ministry’s report on the human rights situation in certain countries

The latest report on the human rights situation in certain countries was published on the Foreign Ministry website on June 7, 2023. These “certain countries” traditionally include the self-proclaimed “exemplary” Western democracies that granted themselves the right to “export” their own human rights standards as universal. At one time they decided they had the privilege to criticise and lecture the rest of the world and judge other governments’ domestic and foreign policies. Nobody could stop them before, but now, times are changing.

All in all, human rights have become a matter of speculation to serve momentary opportunistic needs, an instrument of presumptuous and unrestricted interference with the domestic affairs of sovereign states and, most crucially, an instrument inflating confrontation. The principle of universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights is suddenly forgotten. The West declared freedom of opinion and of expressing an opinion, the notorious freedom of speech, an absolute right. Exercising this right now serves to justify certain officials’ lack of action when it comes to a wide scope of manifestations of intolerance, racism, discrimination and, finally, glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism. As a consequence, we are witnessing radical nationalists pervasively raising their heads in countries that went through the horrors of probably the bloodiest war in human history, World War II, and intensifying attempts to break down societies on ethnic and language grounds. Unfortunately, this is becoming a global problem.

We should specifically mention the efforts of the Western countries and their allies to rewrite the history of World War II and revise its outcome, along with cynical attempts to exonerate war criminals and their henchmen. We are seeing a distortion of historical facts, attacks on culture and traditional values, war against monuments and memorials, and persecution of religious organisations. All this is happening despite the mechanisms developed by international bodies to condemn and prevent the idea of supremacy of one group of people over another. Today, nobody is hiding the fact that, from the perspective of the European Union, NATO, Washington and London, there is a “golden billion” while others exist to serve it.

Nevertheless, representatives of the Western political elite remain hostage to colonial and neocolonial mindsets, which was recently clearly illustrated by High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell’s meme-worthy statement when he divided the world into a beautiful garden and jungles. Attempts to impose a rules-based order, as opposed to international law, is in line with this mindset. Now they are trying to backtrack by saying that the rules-based international order is, in fact, international law. If the international order promoted by the West is indeed international law, then leave it be and don’t make up new terms for it. If you create a new term, then it refers to something different from what international law means.

Today all these manifestations are clearly visible. The events of 2022 demonstrated that the West used duplicitous approaches with the sole goal of causing as much damage as possible – and now deliver a strategic defeat – to Russia and the Russian world. Nobody is hiding this fact anymore. Any means are considered fair. Then again, the history of the 20th century has some very indicative examples to this effect.

We believe that, in the forming new world and more just system of international relations, the principle of genuine respect for the sovereignty, historical, cultural, religious and ethnic characteristics of different countries will be fully realised. There will be no place for colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, racial discrimination and associated intolerance.

Attempts of specific countries to usurp the system of international law and exploit its universal human rights protection mechanisms for sordid motives will be unacceptable. As will be attempts to privatise the concepts of democracy and freedom – and consider some societies exceptional and others eternally submissive.

The purpose of the research developed by the Russian Foreign Ministry is not to lecture or moralise, unlike similar US or EU publications. This research vies for being considered objective as it is based on the materials from non-government human rights organisations and takes into account recommendations of international, universal and regional mechanisms of human rights protection – specifically, the treaty bodies (committees) of the UN system and regional (especially European) human rights protection institutions. First and foremost, our report summarises facts of human rights violations in specific countries. We leave it to readers, experts and analysts to judge the moral implications.

The Foreign Ministry’s report and a similar study by our Belarusian partners will be presented at an international conference on June 22, held on the sidelines of the 53rd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

🔗 https://mid.ru/ru/press_service/spokesman/briefings/1886061/?lang=en

🛡 #OTD 22 years ago, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (#SCO) was founded - a multilateral association aimed at ensuring peace, security and stability and jointly countering new security challenges and threats to member states.

Today, the SCO is made up of eight countries: its founding members – Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – as well as India and Pakistan, which joined in 2017. Iran is also expected to become a full SCO member at the upcoming summit (July 3-4, New Delhi).

In June 2002, the organisation's member states signed the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation that cemented the SCO's focus on the positive promotion of multidimensional cooperation and its non-targeting of third countries and organisations. Today the SCO continues to firmly rule out bloc, ideological and confrontational approaches to solving international and regional development problems.

🤝 One of the most important areas of SCO activity is joint efforts to combat terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking and transnational organised crime. The SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure operates in Tashkent on a permanent basis to ensure effective cooperation between the competent authorities of the member states in these areas.

🌐 The SCO's legal framework for relations with the United Nations and its agencies continues to expand. Partnerships have been established with the #CIS, #CSTO, #EEC, #ASEAN and a number of other multilateral associations that share similar principles of constructive development.