Приглашаем вас принять участие во Всероссийском экологическом диктанте, который пройдет в онлайн-формате и продлится до 8 декабря ✍📄 Регистрация доступна по ссылке: https://xn--80ahmgctc9ac5h.xn--p1acf/register?invite_code=388459

On November 26-27, Malaysia 🇲🇾 hosted an international business forum "World of Opportunities: Russia-ASEAN", organized by the Roscongress Foundation. Over two days, it gathered more than 350 representatives of political, business, and academic circles, media, and experts.

🔹️As part of the forum the #EAEU - #ASEAN Business Dialogue was held. The Eurasian Economic Commission (#EEC) was represented by the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics Mr. Eldar Alisherov.

"Trade between the EAEU and ASEAN is demonstrating steady growth at double-digit rates, which indicates great potential for the development of a multisectoral dialogue between the two organizations. The business community is the key driver of this process."

🔹️The EEC Minister noted that it is important to study the experience and best practices of the EAEU and ASEAN in such areas as artificial intelligence, green economy, and big data economy.

The VI Vladimir Krainev Moscow International Piano Competition accepts applications for participation in the VI Competition which will be held in March 2025. The deadline is November, 30.

The VI competition will be held as follows: the first two rounds – the qualifying round and preliminary auditions – will be based on video recordings; the main competitive auditions, which will consist of solo performances in the semi-finals and performances with an orchestra in the finals, will be held in the halls of the Moscow International House of Music and will be open to the public.

Traditionally, the Vladimir Krainev Moscow International Piano Competition will bring together young musicians aged 8 to 22 and will end with a gala concert of the winners on the stage of the Svetlanov Hall. The winners of the VI competition will perform in the halls of the Moscow International House of Music in the 2025/2026 concert season. Details: http://krainevcompetition.moscow/en/

📄 On 7 November 2024, the Government of the Russian Federation adopted Resolution No. 1510 "On conducting an experiment on testing the rules and conditions for entry into and exit from the Russian Federation of foreign citizens and stateless persons" (hereinafter referred to as "the experiment").

The purpose the experiment is to create a public "Digital Profile of a Foreign Citizen" information resource, a set of information submitted to public information systems by foreign citizens, authorized bodies and organizations participating in the experiment, in the volume and order stipulated by the Experiment Rules.

The experiment will be conducted in two stages.

1️⃣ 1 December 2024 to 30 June 2025

The first one, provides for collecting biometric personal data of foreign citizens (a photographic image of the person's face and finger papillary patterns) at air checkpoints on the state border of the Russian Federation – Moscow air zone at international airports (Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo), as well as Zhukovsky (Moscow region) and at the Mashtakovo automobile checkpoint (Orenburg region).

2️⃣ 30 June 2025 to 30 June 2026

The second stage will be held from 30 June 2025 to 30 June 2026. During this stage, in addition to fulfilling the above-mentioned requirements, foreign citizens planning to enter the Russian Federation visa-free, must register in the integrated identification and authentication system and submit an application to enter into and stay (reside) in the Russian Federation using the mobile application of the Integrated Portal of Public and Municipal Services (Functions) federal state information system.

The experiment will involve all foreign citizens and stateless persons crossing the state border of the Russian Federation at the resolution-specified checkpoints throughout its implementation period, with the exception of:

- citizens of the Republic of Belarus;

- children under 6 years of age;

- heads and staff of diplomatic missions and consular offices of foreign states in the Russian Federation, as well as their family members;

- officials of international organizations (missions of international organizations) and their family members;

- holders of diplomatic and service passports entering or leaving the Russian Federation due to performing official duties or as part of official delegations, as well as their family members.

Meanwhile, the procedure for processing and issuing Russian visas to foreign citizens, including single electronic visa, remains the same.

👉 The full text of the Resolution

🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at Ambassadorial Round Table Discussion, “Ukraine crisis: Global information space” (Moscow, November 29, 2024)

💬 The collective West has long been using information warfare techniques to distort information in order to get ahead with its dirty geopolitical plots.

I’d like to share a historical anecdote with you. <...> In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a special Bible for the British colonies, Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands, was published, also known in the world biblical studies as The Slave Bible. They took 90 percent of the Old Testament and 50 percent of the New Testament out of it. In order to enslave the souls and minds of millions of slaves, the forefathers of today’s Western liberals censored the Holy Scriptures, and removed sections of it that could instill in the slave labourers’ minds the idea that all people are equal before God. The Slave Bibles had been published in London since the early 19th century.

Little has changed since then.

🔻 The Kiev regime operates under direct control of the Anglo-Saxons and their NATO satellites, and acts in line with British colonial practices. It uses many modern-day ultra-liberal Western ideology techniques. Cancel culture is one such technique. The systematic rewriting and falsifying by Ukrainian propagandists of their own past, including blotting out entire chapters from history textbooks, is part of that approach. <...>

🔻 The countries of the collective West, which like to speak about the freedom of speech, pluralism and democracy, actually demonstrate a fierce intolerance of any alternative views. In this context, they have predictably focused their attacks on Russian media outlets such as RT and Sputnik. <...>

👉 Germany has recently banned the broadcasting of Russia’s Channel One and expelled its journalists. We provided a symmetrical response. Similar things happen every day. <...>

The media still serves as one of the main frontlines in the aggressive campaign the collective West has launched against Russia, as well as against other countries within the Global Majority which pursue an independent domestic and foreign policy. Ukraine has turned into yet another testing ground for deploying and testing sophisticated methods for manipulating public opinion. <...>

Washington, London, and EU capitals are all trying to sweep under the carpet the crimes perpetrated by their underlings in Ukraine and justify them. In doing so, they have been relying on their media as a powerful tool while blocking any sources of unwanted news. They have gone to great lengths to paralyse international human rights bodies. Moreover, the fact that Russian journalists have been dying at the hands of Ukrainian Nazis, as I have already mentioned, is a non-topic in the West. <...>

❗️ Entities like UNESCO, OSCE and the Council of Europe have a mandate under their statutory documents to promote human rights, including ensuring safety for journalists. In recent years, they have demonstrated their extreme opportunism and inability to live up to their mission by remaining silent and failing to act.

***

But information wars, lies or fake news will not help the neo-Nazi Kiev regime. The special military operation’s goals and objectives will be achieved.

However, achieving a lasting and sustainable settlement in the Ukraine conflict would be impossible unless we remove its root causes. These primarily include:

▪️creating lasting security threats for Russia along its western borders resulting from NATO’s expansion,

▪️ NATO’s efforts to absorb Ukraine,

▪️ the system-wide effort by the Kiev regime to strip Russians and Russian speakers in its own country of their rights.

Read in full

🎙 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview to Tucker Carlson (Moscow, December 6, 2024)

Read in full
Watch on Youtube

Key talking points

#RussiaUS

• We would like to have normal relations with all countries especially with the United States. We don't see any reason why Russia and the United States cannot cooperate for the sake of the universe.

• The Ukrainians would not be able to do what they're doing with long-range modern weapons without direct participation of the American servicemen. We don't want to aggravate the situation, but since ATACMS and other long-range weapons are being used against mainland Russia as it were, we are sending signals. <...>

[The US and its allies] must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call strategic defeat of Russia. They fight for keeping the hegemony over the world on any country, any region, any continent. We fight for our legitimate security interests.

• We don't want to aggravate the situation, but since ATACMS and other long-range weapons are being used against mainland Russia, we are sending signals. We hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapon system called #Oreshnik was taken seriously.

• When the United States and other Western countries recognized unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo, they said this is the self-determination being implemented. There was no referendum in Kosovo — unilateral declaration of independence. <...> And when a few years later, Crimeans were holding referendum with invitation of many international observers, not from international organizations, but from parliamentarians in Europe, in Asia, in post-Soviet space, they said that they cannot accept this because this is violation of territorial integrity 🤷‍♂️

The UN Charter is not a menu. You have to respect it in all its entirety 👉 #UNCharterIsOurRules

• I think [Donald Trump] is a very strong person. A person who wants results. Who doesn't like procrastination on anything. But this does not mean that he's pro-Russian as some people try to present him. The amount of sanctions we received under the Trump administration was very big.

#Ukraine

• We strongly prefer peaceful solution through negotiations on the basis of respecting legitimate security interest of Russia, and on the basis of respecting the people who live in Ukraine, who still live in Ukraine being Russians. <...>

No military bases, no military exercises on the Ukrainian soil with participation of foreign troops. <...> We cannot tolerate a deal which would keep the legislation which are prohibiting Russian language, Russian media, Russian culture, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because it is a violation of the obligations of Ukraine under the UN Charter.

• We are not talking about exterminating anybody's population. We don't have any intention to exterminate Ukrainian people. They are brothers and sisters to the Russian people.

• It is becoming clear that there is a fatigue in some capitals, and there are talks every now and then that the Americans would like to leave [Ukraine] with the Europeans and to concentrate on something more important.

#Syria

• The Americans in the east of Syria groom some Kurdish separatists using the profits from oil and grain sold, the resources which they occupy. <...> The information [on who's backing Islamist groups] which is being floated and it's in the public domain mentions among others the Americans, the Brits. Some people say that Israel is interested in making this situation aggravate. So that Gaza is not under very close scrutiny.

🎙 Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov gave interview to CNN on a wide range of issues, focusing on Russia-US relations, the West's hybrid war against Russia, the emerging multipolar world and the Ukrainian crisis, its true roots and essence (Moscow, December 4, 2024)

Key talking points

• The risks [of escalation between the USA and Russia] are high and they are growing. That's quite disturbing. I believe we have a great lack of restraint on the part of the West, United States in particular, where people seemingly underestimate our resolve to defend our core national security interests.

• If not for the Trump-1 administration that simply destroyed the INF Treaty, which served well interests of both the US and Russia for several decades, then there would be no "Oreshnik" in our hands.

• Our strong will to defend our interests by all means is there and it's unwavered and unshaken, irrespective of how many billion of dollars will be burned in this conflict by the US.

❗️ We will not be the first to escalate. We will not be the first to do something that would mean we have created a situation with point of no return past.

• We at BRICS do not want to replace the dollar. We want to develop a system that would allow us at BRICS to serve what our economic operators need in parallel to what US and others have. The monopolism which US tries to maintain and insert and impose everywhere is dangerous for the US itself.

• It's a polyphonic world order to use the word of President Vladimir Putin from his Valdai presentation.

Russia's MFA statement on Syria:
⚡️ We are monitoring the dramatic developments in Syria with extreme concern.
Following his talks with a number of participants in the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad decided to step down as the Syrian President and leave the country, instructing the government to transfer power peacefully.
Russia was not involved in those negotiations.
However, we call on all the parties involved to renounce the use of violence and resolve all governance issues through political efforts.
In this regard, the Russian Federation maintains contact with all Syrian opposition groups.
We urge all parties to respect the opinions of all ethnic and religious groups in Syrian society. We strongly support efforts to establish an inclusive political process based on Resolution 2254, unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council.
We hope that these approaches will be taken into account by the UN and all stakeholders, including in the context of implementing UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen’s recent initiative for urgent inclusive intra-Syrian talks in Geneva.
Additionally, Russia is taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety of our citizens in Syria.
Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. There is no serious threat to their security at the moment.

Next year we will celebrate the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. In anticipation of this date, we are launching a series of publications about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.

Alexander Herman (1915-1943)

Commander of the 3rd Leningrad Partisan Brigade.

A native of Petrograd, Alexander Herman was, according to some sources, of German descent. He served in the military starting in 1933. When the war began, he joined the scouts. Operating behind enemy lines, he commanded a partisan unit that struck fear into the enemy soldiers. His brigade eliminated several thousand Nazi soldiers and officers, derailed hundreds of trains, and destroyed hundreds of vehicles.

The Nazis launched a full-scale hunt for Herman. In 1943, his partisan unit was surrounded in the Pskov region. While breaking through to rejoin Soviet forces, the brave commander was killed by the enemy bullet.

Embassy Comment
In today's The Straits Times, we read an article by Mr Ravi Velloor, Senior Columnist, entitled "Ukraine's adjusting to the idea that it has to cede some territory to Russia". We leave it to Mr Velloor's conscience to decide whether he is right or wrong.
For our part, we sincerely regret that the article uses the same old hackneyed (and long-refuted) arguments about the so-called “Russian attack on Ukraine”, citing as its source the clearly biased assessments of Lieutenant General Hans Werner Wiermann, who was Nato's head of international military staff. And the entire fruit of Mr Ravi Velloor’s thoughts leaves the impression of some kind of gloomy hopelessness and stagnation, either in the author’s conclusions or in the real state of affairs.
But that is not the case. A multipolar, fairer and more humane world is taking shape before our eyes. Its trumpet was sounded recently at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. An integral part of this process is the accelerating integration in the Eurasian space, which raises the question of creating a new equal and indivisible Eurasian security system to replace the Euro-Atlantic model, with which the collective West tried to inflict a so-called "strategic defeat" on the Russian Federation. The pragmatic economic basis for our vision of stability on the continent can be the concept of a Greater Eurasian Partnership uniting Russia, the SCO, the EAEU and ASEAN.
You can read more about our views on the website of the Valdai International Discussion Club, where a speech by Russian President V.V. Putin on these issues was published. Read it, dear readers. Life will sparkle with new colours.

The Embassy comment

The Eurasian Economic Union (#EAEU) is a powerful bloc not only in trade but also in industrial cooperation and scientific and technical collaboration.

Over 10 years of existence, the EAEU has established itself as an independent center of the emerging multipolar world. The activities of the EAEU contribute to the growth of trade and investment exchanges, the intensification of business contacts, and the expansion of cooperative ties, which bring real benefits to each member of the Union.

For example, the combined GDP of the Union's member states has grown from $1.6 trillion to $2.5 trillion, while trade turnover with third countries has increased by 60%—from $579 billion to $923 billion.

Currently, the EAEU has established full-fledged free trade agreements with China, Serbia, Vietnam, and Iran. These agreements have enabled the EAEU to significantly increase trade turnover with these countries. A positive trend is also observed in relations with China. Remarkably, Russian-Chinese bilateral relations have seen substantial success, with the volume of trade surpassing the $200 billion target set by the countries’ leaders by the end of 2023.

This year the negotiations on the similar agreements were held with the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, India and Egypt. Free trade zone agreements have also been discussed at various stages with Mongolia, Pakistan, and Israel.

Many countries are currently seeking not only to expand trade but also to simplify financial transactions. The EAEU can offer the necessary tools in this regard. For instance, within the union, the volume of trade conducted in national currencies has already surpassed 90%.

Russia highly values the mutually beneficial multifaceted ties with its EAEU partners and seeks to continue working on strengthening the integration ties within it.