The demolition of yet another repetition of the Kremlin’s talking points to justify the invasion of Ukraine by its Ambassador to the UN, Vasily Neben, by Poland’s Radosław Sikorski was applauded by many of those who attended.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt called it “a classic. Not much left of Russia after that.” British historian Timothy Garton Ash described it as “one for the ages,” while Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German diplomat and former head of the Munich Security Conference, wrote: “Bravo Radek. We expected nothing less from you,” in a post on the X social media:
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Sikorski’s four-minute speech was aimed at “correcting the record” of the Russian envoy’s remarks, saying:
“I am amazed by the tone and content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador and I thought I could be useful by correcting the record.
“Ambassador Nebenzia has called Kyiv ‘clients’ of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.
“He calls them a ‘criminal Kyiv regime’. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.
“He calls them Nazis. Actually, the president is Jewish, the defense minister is Muslim and they have no political prisoners.
“He says that Ukraine was walling in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.
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“He blamed the war on US neo-colonialism. In fact, it is Russia that tried to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under the Bolsheviks, and it is the third attempt.
“He said that we are the prisoners of Russophobia. Phobia means irrational fear. Yet we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and by Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that is not irrational. When Russia threatens us, we trust it.
“He says that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We’ve only started re-arming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbors.
“He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War Two! What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on Sept.17, 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on Sept. 22.
“He says that Russia’s always only beaten back aggression. What were the Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographical excursion? No, the truth is that for every time Russia has been invaded, she has invaded ten times.
“He says ‘this is a perfidious proxy war by the West’. My advice is - don’t fall into the Western trap - withdraw your troops to the international border and avoid this Western plot.
“He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. Well, I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovich murdered 100 of his compatriots and was removed from the office by democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including his own party, the Party of Regions.
“And finally, he is saying that we, the West are trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten… Well, Russia didn’t win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese War, it didn’t win World War One, it didn’t win the Battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan and it didn’t win the Cold War. But there is good news! After each failure there were reforms.
“Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member - on a permanent basis - of the Security Council.
“But what the Ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now. They failed to subjugate us then, they’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.”
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