Russian Consulate in Cape Town

⚡️ Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’sstatement and answers to questions at the Government Hour hearings during a plenary session of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (February 11, 2026): Key takeaways: • The world is undergoing a long-term transition to a multipolar order, marked by growing competition between the Western minority and the World Majority. • Western countries continue to pursue neo-colonial policies, double standards, and attempts to preserve dominance, including through pressure, destabilisation, and military actions. • Russia views current global upheavals as part of a profound and lasting shift in international relations, not a temporary phase. • Strategic stability is deteriorating due to Western actions, while Russia maintains responsible conduct and observes arms control limits as long as the US does the same. • The Arctic should remain a zone of peace and cooperation; Russia will respond if military threats against it emerge there. • Russia rejects Western double standards on self-determination, defending the choices of #Crimea, #Donbass, and #Novorossiya. ❗️A sustainable settlement in Ukraine is impossible without addressing root causes; understandings reached with the US in 2025 remain valid. • Russia continues negotiations to ensure its security, protect Russian-speaking populations, and eliminate threats from the Kiev regime and its external sponsors. • The comprehensive strategic partnership with #China is a stabilising factor in global affairs and a cornerstone of regional security. • Strategic partnerships with #Belarus, the #DPRK, #Iran, the #CIS and the #CSTO members strengthen regional stability and Russia’s security. • Russia is deepening ties across #Eurasia, including with India, Türkiye, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, and regional organisations such as the #EAEU, #SCO, and #ASEAN. • The #Russia-#Africa partnership is expanding, with preparations underway for the Third Russia-Africa Summit. • #BRICS is emerging as a key platform for the World Majority, promoting cooperation free from sanctions and Western restrictions. • Russia supports #GlobalSouth efforts against modern forms of colonialism and unilateral coercive measures, including through new UN international days. READ IN FULL

📰Interview with Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova for 'Zapiski Sledovatelya' Journal No. 2/2025, published by Russia's Investigative Committee(May 30, 2025) ✍️The Legal Front of Memory Key talking points: • Combating manifestations of racism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism, and countering attempts to rewrite history and distort the outcomes of #WWII are among Russia’s priorities on the human rights track. • Today we see increasingly frequent attempts to rewrite the history and results of WWII, to erase the memory of heroic anti-fascist fighters, to destroy monuments built in their honour, and to ban the wearing of military decorations that are strongly associated with Victory. • History is being falsified in an openly hostile manner, which includes glorifying Nazi collaborators and disrespecting the memory of Soviet soldiers and civilians who died in the fight against fascism, questioning the Red Army’s liberation mission in Eastern Europe <...> The decisions of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and the Nuremberg Tribunal verdicts are also being questioned. • This tendency to rewrite history and glorify Nazi henchmen has become part of the Kiev regime’s state ideology and policy. The neo-Nazi elites are trying to cement Ukraine’s independence by denying its Soviet past, praising the Waffen-SS Galicia Division <...> • In line with efforts to combat the glorification of Nazism and the distortion of history, every year since 2005, Russia has submitted a resolution on combatting glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, to the UN General Assembly. On December 17, 2024, during the plenary session of the 79th #UNGA in New York, 119 countries voted in support of this document. • Russia and a group of like-minded countries submitted a draft resolution on the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War IIto the ongoing 79th UN General Assembly, which was adopted on March 4. <...> Our partners’ unified stance on this matter constitutes a substantive contribution to countering the rewriting of history. • It is a matter of principle for us that the international community recognise the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War as the genocide of the Soviet people. • The actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Nazi-affiliated armed groups reveal signs of genocidal intent. They wanted to eliminate Russians and Russian speakers in #Donbass <...>, adepts of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and people in this region in general as an ethnic, religious and national entity. • Ukraine initiated proceedings in the UN International Court of Justice in February 2022, right after the start of the special military operation, as per the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, it turned to the Kiev regime’s disadvantage. • The International Court of Justice issued its preliminary objections under this case on February 2, 2024. In this document, it rejected all the claims made by Ukraine alleging that Russia violated the Convention. The court went on to rule that further proceedings will focus on whether Ukraine itself committed acts of genocide in Donbass. Therefore, the Kiev regime filed the lawsuit only to become a defendant in this case. • On November 18, 2024, Russia submitted its main pleading document, the Counter Memorandum, as part of these proceedings. In fact, this is the first time since the Nuremberg Trials that Russia de facto assumed the role of the prosecution in an international tribunal. But there are even more parallels with the Nuremberg Trials — just as during these trials, we are dealing with a Nazi regime which was targeting civilians with mass atrocities on racial, ethnic and national grounds. Read the interview in full