Post #6925

🎙Read excerpts from the statement of Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE A.Volgarev «On anti-democratic and repressive practices of the Kiev regime as a result of external governance over Ukraine since 2014» (meeting of the OSCE PC, 05.06.2025) 💬 Following the externally orchestrated, bloody, and anti-democratic coup in 2014, its Western inspirers and sponsors set a direct course to transform Ukraine into an "anti-Russia," a battering ram against Russian statehood in military, political, cultural, and economic dimensions ▪️Political assassinations, extrajudicial reprisals, and criminal prosecutions of dissenters have become commonplace in Ukraine. Discriminatory practices in language, culture, education, and media have intensified. A large-scale assault on religious and other freedoms has been carried out. Under the pretext of "national security," opposition parties have been banned. Thousands of political figures, journalists, and civic activists have been arrested, tortured, or have disappeared without a trace. ▪️Another case of cynical political persecution is the targeting of well-known human rights defender Elena Berezhnaya, detained by the SBU in March 2022. In December 2024, a Kiev court sentenced her to 14 years in prison with property confiscation. In March 2025, the European Court of Human Rights declared her arrest unlawful and ordered compensation for moral damages. Kiev openly ignored this judgment. No compensation was paid, nor were there any attempts to improve her detention conditions. Berezhnaya is currently in a prison hospital under guard in critical condition, with no access granted to relatives, independent doctors, or international observers ▪️The unprecedented wave of repression ruthlessly targets not only prominent public figures and human rights defenders. Thousands of residents of the Kherson region, accused of "collaborationism" for participating in a referendum that approved reunification with Russia, are now counted among the persecuted. As noted earlier, the majority of political prisoners in Ukraine are elderly women whose only "crime" was distributing humanitarian aid, compiling lists of those in need of social assistance, or teaching children in schools. According to estimates, up to 13,000 political prisoners are currently held in prisons of the Kiev regime ▪️What about the countless cases of forced mobilization into the armed formations of the Kiev regime? A law on the so-called "voluntary" mobilization of young men aged 18–25 has already been passed. Recently, a new draft law was introduced to the Verkhovna Rada on mobilizing men over 60. The internet is flooded with videos where concerned eyewitnesses document crimes committed by employees of the "Territorial Recruitment Centers" against their own male citizens ☦️ The Zelenskyy regime continues to make vigorous efforts to destroy canonical Orthodoxy. Monasteries belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) are being seized, and sacred Orthodox sites are being illegally confiscated. The attempts by Kiev officials to conduct an "inventory" of relics in places sacred to Orthodox believers can only be described as blasphemous. Such an inventory is currently underway in the caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. UOC clergy are barred from these "inspections" as unwanted witnesses. All of Kiev’s actions amount to nothing less than state-sponsored vandalism ❗️It is utterly inexplicable - even from the perspective of basic decency—why the Finnish Chairmanship of the OSCE remains silent on this matter. We see no reaction from the relevant institutions of our Organization, particularly the ODIHR. Nor is there any response from the current Western "masters" of the territories still controlled by the Kiev regime. Perhaps this is the most eloquent testament to the results of efforts to "promote democratization and the rule of law" by external forces that orchestrated and funded the armed coup in Ukraine in February 2014