Ambassador Aleksei Erkhov’s video-lecture at Sakarya University
30.09.2022
On September 30, Russian Ambassador to Ankara Aleksey Erkhov delivered a speech via video-conference within the framework of the program titled "Conflict Resolution in Theory and Practice: The Russia-Ukraine War and Turkey's Role in Maintaining Peace" held at Sakarya University. Addressing university students, professors and academics, the Ambassador shared Russia's approaches to the situation around Ukraine as well as global and regional security.
Full text:
I am glad to address all of you, students, professors and academics of Sakarya University, as well as young diplomats of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in other words all those who, apparently, in 15-20 years will largely shape both the perception of Türkiye as well as the foreign policy of your country. That is why I would like to share with you some of my thoughts, conclusions and forecasts, based on my 40 years’ experience as a person who is not a theoretician, but a practicing diplomat. And most importantly, I would like to tell you how and what we, Russian diplomats and Russians in general, feel at this more than difficult moment of our history and history of the whole world. Moreover, there are a lot of myths, fake news, concepts that have nothing to do with reality and even deliberately misleading terms and clichés around nowadays events.
What I mean is, for example, what we often hear in the West about "Russia's unprovoked aggression." The expression itself seems to be somewhat nonsense. What does "unprovoked aggression" mean? And if an aggression is provoked – is it ok? In real life, and in politics, such things just do not happen. Every action – I would like to stress the word every – every action provokes a counteraction. Did the last emperor of Byzantium lament and complain about an “unprovoked aggression”, looking from the fortress wall at the approaching army of Mehmet II the Conqueror? No, in real life everything is much more simple and tough. And the fate of the world is more than often determined, unfortunately, not by law (it is being destroyed), but by harsh force. So, this is how it's happening.
You probably remember Redyard Kipling's ballad «Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet», the first lines of which end with the words “But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the Earth!” We are again standing face to face with our enemies from the other end of the Earth. And the winner takes in all.
By the way, from time to time I will resort to historical extrapolations in order to better illustrate what happened with us a long time ago and what we are facing now. So, where are we? What are we witnessing and participating in? I mean what is happening in Ukraine and around it, in other words in close proximity to Türkiye? When did it all start? After all, it is clear that everything did not start on February 24, because everything that we see is just a link in a centuries-old chain of processes.
You know, it's hard to say when it all started. Maybe in 1654, when the population of the land that now we call Ukraine, mortally tired of the bloody wars and raids of the Crimean slave traders, asked to join Russia? Or in 1774, when the Russian troops, sweeping away the resistance of the Janissaries and sipahis, captured the Crimea and put an end to the centuries-old tradition of raids on Russia and enslaving millions of those who lived on the territory of present-day Ukraine, Russia and Poland? Or in 1918, when the first ever independent Ukrainian government was formed in Kiev and this first experiment of its own statehood failed? Or during World War II, when numerous divisions of Ukrainian nationalists, joining Hitler's Nazi troops, took an active part in the mass executions of Jews, Russians, Belarusians and Poles? Or in 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev carelessly “gifted” Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, spitting not only on common sense, but also on the constitution and laws of his own country?
However, let's not go too far. Let's go back to the days of the end of the Cold War. You should know that these events which took place 30 years ago are still regarded by the majority in my country not as the defeat of the Soviet Union, but as an act of national betrayal by the leaders of the USSR and the Russian Federation. And this feeling of ours is, probably, somewhat akin to what the Turks felt after the First World War, when the imperialists shamelessly imposed the Treaty of Sevres and took away from Türkiye large territories that previously belonged to it.
But now I would like to focus on some other issues. Namely, on the processes that started in Ukraine which gained independence in 1991. What I mean is the large-scale work aimed at turning Ukraine into a so-called "anti-Russia", the work which was conducted with the most active financial and organizational assistance from the West and Western “soft power” mechanisms such as the structures of George Soros, so well-known in Türkiye.
It is important to understand what we mean by this term – Anti-Russia. The sense is that it is something diametrically opposed to Russia. But the term is very multilayer. First, it has a geopolitical component. As you remember, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote once that Ukraine is one of the important “geopolitical centers” on what he called the “Eurasian chessboard”, and whoever owns Ukraine controls the “Heartland”. Secondly, this term relates to real politics and economics. As the same Zbigniew Brzezinski is believed to have said once, “The New World Order will be built against Russia, on the ruins of Russia and at the expense of Russia.” Third, the cultural component. There is no Russia without the Russian culture and language. That is why they began to deliberately clean out everything Russian from the Ukrainian society. Look here. It seems to be funny. But I would like to see, what your reaction will be, for example, if your Turkish boys somewhere in Europe would be told: “C’mon, you will no longer be Mehmet, but you will be Michael. And if you don’t want this to happen then go out of here, to the country where Mehmets live”. By the way, this lady is a deputy of the parliament.
Or one more video. Is this amusing? May be. But from this slogan, as it turned out, there is only one step to the equally funny, but far from being harmless slogan "Muscovites – to the gallows".
Step by step, Russian literature and Russian language were banned. They began to rewrite history, to teach children according to new patterns, with the aim to incite hatred against our country. Nationalist groups, those who elevated the collaborators with Hitler the Nazis Bandera and Shukhevych to the rank of national heroes, started to act more freely without hindrance, torchlight parades began to be organized in the country in the manner of those that took place in Nazi Germany. So, the brainwashing of the population, mostly, young people and children has begun.
And in 2014, there was the ‘Maidan’ - a word which is quiet clear in all languages: Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, which led – and we in Moscow firmly believe in that - to the overthrow of the legally elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the establishment of new power in the country.
And the technologies of the Maidan and other so called “color revolutions” were previously worked out in other countries, in some of them being successful, in some not. For instance, here, look, this is Moscow in 2012.
And here is another photo which was taken a year later. Doesn't it remind you of anything?
After the coup, the persecution of those who disagreed with new lifestyle intensified, and they began to be persecuted everywhere. The political assassinations of Oles Buzina, Pavel Sheremet and other public figures and journalists have never been investigated. Those guilty of the monstrous tragedy in Odessa on May 2, 2014 have not been found and punished. During this tragedy, about 50 people were burned alive and killed in the local House of Trade Unions. For over eight years the Ukrainian army and militants from nationalist groups have been killing Donbass residents with impunity only because they refused to recognise the outcome of the criminal, bloody, anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and decided to uphold their rights as guaranteed by Ukraine’s constitution, including the right to freely use their native Russian language. Look here, but I would like to warn you, now and later on there will be sensible video footage. The authorities openly encouraged these processes, inciting hatred against the Russians. Then Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseny Yatsenyuk said in 2015 that ‘sub-humans’ lived in Donbass – a direct parallel with Hitler’s “Untermensch”. And the current President Vladimir Zelensky when asked what he thought about the residents of Donbass in his interview in 2021, talked about these people as of ‘creatures’ or ‘animal species’.
So, with Ukrainian state support, the ideology of ethnic intolerance towards ethnic Russians is being imposed. The country’s officials are no longer ashamed of their Nazi-like nature, and openly and with impunity call for killing Russians. Thus, Ukraine’s ambassador to Kazakhstan Petr Vrublevsky, said openly in an August 22 interview: “We are trying to kill as many of them (Russians) as possible. The more Russians we kill now, the fewer Russians our children will have to kill. That’s all.” Bravo, Your Excellency.
More than that: Ukraine has become the most important link in the process of NATO’s gaining control of the post-Soviet space. For a long time, NATO has been approaching closer and closer to our borders. And this justly arouse Russia's concern. From our point of view, NATO is a relic of the Cold War, the need for which has disappeared with its end. But NATO continues to exist, and, as we see, this alliance is being used only as an instrument of US foreign policy.
At the initiative of the United States, the mechanisms for arms control and the maintenance of strategic stability created by the generations of negotiators are being dismantled. At the doctrinal level, the Americans have lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, and some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries started speaking about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia. And we were not the first to raise this issue. These and other worrisome moments make military planners work out the most dangerous scenarios of a nuclear clash, that can lead to catastrophic consequences.
Russia has consistently advocated building a system of equal and indivisible security. Last December, we launched a large and frank initiative to work out legally binding agreements that would guarantee the restoration of predictability and stability on Russia's western borders. But the alliance responded negatively on key aspects of the Russian proposals, refusing to guarantee the further non-expansion of NATO to the East and the non-deployment of strike weapons that threaten us. In fact, we were denied the right to defend our fundamental interests.
The West not only sought to implement an “anti-Russia” scenario, but also engaged in the most active military development of Ukrainian territory, flooding Ukraine with weapons and military advisers. And it continues to do so now. Frankly, no one is paying any attention to the economy or well-being of the people living there, they just do not care about it at all, but they have never spared money to create a NATO foothold in the east that is directed against Russia and to cultivate aggression, hatred and Russophobia.
Moreover, they deployed their biolaboratories in Ukraine, their activities led to an unmanageable increase in hazardous and economically important infections morbidity. In fact, they made lab rats out of Ukrainians, on which a variety of experiments were carried out: large-scale immunity screenings in order to assess the susceptibility of the population of the region to certain biological agents, sensitive genetic information was collected and transferred abroad. At the same time, technical means for the delivery and use of biological weapons based on drones were developed and patented in the United States, designed to destroy enemy troops without risk to American military personnel. Meanwhile, the United States is blocking any international initiative to verify the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. This eliminates the possibility of inspecting labs both within the U.S. and outside of national jurisdiction. Our military is getting more and more new data about this US activity, which is regularly made public during briefings by the Ministry of Defense and which the Americans are carefully trying to black out from the global network.
Why are we against Ukraine joining NATO? It is very simple. Because in its present-day form, in the form of a Nazi state, it will be used by the alliance to generate direct and immediate threats to Russia. Flight time for a missile from Ukrainian territory to the heart of Russia is just a few minutes. We asked, warned, offered. In fact, the West didn't want to hear us. So it became one of the factors of the decision to start a special military operation. Well, here we go. Generally, the use of armed forces outside the state boundaries is not such a rare practice. Take, for example, Türkiye's operations in northern Iraq or Syria. Or Cyprus, by the way. There, too, a state has decided to intervene to protect its brothers.
Now we are hearing hysterical shouting about the violation of all thinkable standards of international humanitarian law and about the killing of people. This is true, people are dying, but it is necessary to face the truth and stop brushing aside the facts showing that people are primarily killed by the absolutely senseless shelling of civilian districts in Donbass and other parts of Ukraine by the Ukrainian armed forces and nationalist battalions. Kiev is shamelessly using prohibited weapons: cluster munitions, anti-personnel landmines, striking residential areas. This is pure terrorism. It did not start yesterday.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces do not hesitate to resort to the practice, often used by terrorists, of putting various weapons systems in residential areas and social facilities consequently making out of them targets for fire damage. This, in particular, was pointed out by the report of the international human rights organization "Amnesty International" dated August 4. To intimidate the local population, abductions and murders of citizens disloyal to the Kiev regime are widely practiced, as evidenced by the data of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Kiev acts in an absolutely barbaric way against prisoners of war, blasphemously shooting the unarmed in violation of relevant international conventions. And such an inhumane attitude applies not only to Russian prisoners of war, but also to those Ukrainians who did not want to fight with Russia, timely laying down their arms. Suffice it to recall the shelling of the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the prison in Yelenovka on July 29, committed just hours before the start of interrogations of Ukrainian prisoners of war, the materials of which could become flagrant evidence of the crime of the national battalions and the Kiev regime. As a result, 53 people were killed, including those who surrendered from the Mariupol plant "Azovstal", another 75 people were injured.
And I would like to ask you where were all those who try to accuse Russia all these eight years when thousands of civilians were slaughtered due to shelling by the Ukrainian artillery? None of us has heard any condemnation of what the Ukrainian military was doing. Everyone shamefully, and sometimes even bluntly, turned a blind eye to this, as they turned a blind eye to the recent case of mass deaths of civilians in Donetsk from shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After Russian soldiers left Bucha and Izyum the Ukrainians with their Western partners shouted loud bluntly accusing Russia for allegedly killing civilians. However, the proves were never submitted. Meanwhile, serious pundits understand quiet clearly that it was a pure provocation and a fake.
What is happening today proves that it is the West that opposes any political settlement in Ukraine. After the start of the special military operation, in particular in the Istanbul talks, Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. These proposals concerned above all ensuring Russia’s security and interests. But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.
Now the West has gone too far in its aggressive anti-Russia policy, making endless threats to our country and people. Some irresponsible Western politicians are doing more than just speak about their plans to organise the delivery of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, which could be used to deliver strikes at Crimea and other Russian regions. Such terrorist attacks, including with the use of Western weapons, are happening more and more often at border areas in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. NATO is conducting reconnaissance through Russia’s southern regions in real time and with the use of modern systems, aircraft, vessels, satellites and strategic drones. Washington, London and Brussels are openly encouraging Kiev to move the hostilities to the “mainland” Russia. They openly say that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently deprived of political, economic, cultural and any other sovereignty and ransacked.
With the aim of total economic weakening of Russia, sanctions were imposed against us. But the course of events has shown that they will not succeed in isolating our country. We are supported by the vast majority of countries in the world. It is enough to look at the map to understand this. They support us by not joining the campaign of sanctions and other pressure on Russia initiated by the United States and its allies. With single exceptions, representatives of all civilizational communities of the East and the South, including the Arab-Muslim world, African and Latin American civilizations, the ASEAN community, perceive the anti-Russian sanctions campaign of the Western minority as a clear relapse of neo-colonial thinking. Most countries, not in words, but in deeds, demonstrate their readiness to cooperate with us, to maintain the economic, cultural and other ties that we have already developed, and now we will expand them even more.
The EU countries, while imposing sanctions against Russia, suffer from the severance of trade and economic ties with our country. Today, we see one manufacturing site after another shutting down in Europe itself. The competitive ability of European companies is in decline, for the EU officials themselves are essentially cutting them off from affordable commodities and energy, as well as trade markets. It will come as no surprise if eventually the niches currently occupied by European businesses, both on the continent and on the global market in general, will be taken over by their American patrons who know no boundaries or hesitation when it comes to pursuing their interests and achieving their goals.
In conclusion I would like to touch upon a highly acute topic of today’s agenda – referendums that are taking place in Donetsk, Lugansk, Herson and Zaporozhye regions these days. The UN Charter has a provision about the right of nations to self-determination. And here is a precedent. During the Kosovo crisis, the International Court of Justice ruled that if a portion of a territory, a portion of a country chooses to declare independence, it does not have to ask the central government of that country for permission. This was the case of Kosovo. Is the situation with the Donetsk Republic, the Lugansk Republic and others not the same? It is the same. Since they have this right – and I would like to stress once again they do have it in accordance with the UN Charter and the right to self-determination – they exercise it.
By saying this I would like to remind also the words of Vladimir Zelensky who last year publicly recommended that those of residents who regarded themselves as Russians, wanted to speak Russian and wanted their children and grandchildren to have a future, should ship out to Russia. So, it was Ukrainian authorities that made life of ethnic Russians in Ukraine intolerable. It was Ukrainian authorities that started this process that has ultimately led to referendums on the accession of these territories to the Russian Federation. As President Vladimir Putin said, we will certainly respect the results of these democratic processes.
Thank you for your attention.
