Eight More Minutes of Lavrov: The Vesti Interview

A short, specific interview for the Vesti program builds on the 4 February essay he wrote that I translated. Lavrov’s very dedicated to educating people on this topic:

Question: What are the main geopolitical principles laid down in the decisions of the Yalta Conference?

Sergey Lavrov: The principles were simple. Recently, I had the opportunity to answer questions on this topic. I even wrote an article, because they began to say more and more often: "You see what is happening in Europe. It has lost its grip. America is now on its own. In general, it wants to manage everything everywhere, to [their] benefit and not to owe anything to anyone." The Yalta-Potsdam system has exhausted itself. Let's come up with something new.

The point is not that the system is bad in international law. The international legal embodiment of Yalta and Potsdam is the UN Charter. Who can be against its principles?

Read it. There you will not find a single line that would cause rejection among normal people. The UN is based on the sovereign equality of states. How could it be otherwise, when everyone is equal? This is what we are taught in Orthodoxy and in other world religions.

It is necessary to ensure equality and the right of nations to self-determination. The right of nations to self-determination is at the heart of decolonisation, which took place 15 years after the creation of the UN and after the approval of the Charter. When the African peoples finally conclude that the people who govern them (from the capitals of the metropolises) through "inspectors on the ground" do not reflect their interests. Just like the ultra-nationalists who came to power in Ukraine after February 2014. It was immediately clear that they did not reflect the interests of the population of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya. This is obvious.

The General Assembly, in one of its documents (when it specifically analyzed all the principles of the UN Charter), came to a consensus that it is necessary to respect the territorial integrity of any state whose governments respect the right of nations to self-determination, and by virtue of this they represent the entire people living on this territory.

It is clear that those who are now leading Ukraine under the "puppeteer" of Western patrons do not represent the interests of a huge part of the population. Crimea and Donbass, Novorossiya–-these are long-closed issues. Given how the results of the referendum in these territories are reflected in our Constitution.

There is also the principle of respect for territorial integrity. I have already spoken about it. In order for your territorial integrity to be respected, respect your people. Do not forbid him to speak his native language, remember his history, raise his children the way your grandfathers, great-grandfathers, fathers and mothers raised you. This is also about the UN Charter. It says that it is necessary to respect the rights of any person, regardless of race, gender, language or religion.

The canonical religion and language in Ukraine are prohibited for Russian speakers. The West with the slogan "human rights" is "rushing" around the world, raising this banner for any reason, blaming Venezuela, Iran, us, China, who knows who. In any bilateral and multilateral process, the West always says that it is a beacon of human rights, the rule of law.

Hinting at President Donald Trump's coming to power in the United States, Ms von der Leyen said that European values (democracy, human rights and the rule of law) are under "enormous threat." This is said by a woman who categorically does not want to see laws on the extermination of everything Russian (language, media, culture, banning the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a sister church for the Russian Orthodox Church), which were adopted by the Nazi regime of Vladimir Zelensky (and before him Petr Poroshenko).

Such hypocrisy on the part of the West means only one thing: they have not reconciled themselves to the fact that a different time has come, that multipolarity has already come. Everyone should be equal and respect each other, compete fairly. After all, the West tried to persuade us when the Soviet Union disappeared, that now a new era has come, "the end of history." We are all now based on the same principles: globalization, fair competition, the presumption of innocence. Everything has been discarded and thrown away.

In the latest statements by the same Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders of the European Union (most leaders, I do not want to offend everyone) it is simply "obvious" that no matter what, "this is how we interpret democracy." In Ukraine, it is possible to ban the Russian language. Try to ban French in Switzerland or English in Ireland (now they are "butting heads" with the Irish there). If English is banned in Ireland, look at what the "cry to the heavens" will be. There are many similar examples. It was decided that in Romania C. George Georgescu will not run for president, although the country's Constitutional Court cleared him of all suspicions. And the Central Election Commission said: "We don't care about the Constitutional Court, the President ordered us not to let 'this' in, because he does not 'scold' Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Therefore, the "genetic" property of the West to constantly feel like a hegemon continues to undermine the foundations of the Yalta-Potsdam system. This is a very fair system.

Realizing that we are going to talk about the 80th anniversary, I took a quote from F. Roosevelt, the then American president, who spoke in the US Congress in March 1945 following the Yalta Conference. He said: "The structure of universal peace cannot be created by one person, one party or one country. There cannot be an American, British, Russian, French, Chinese world. There can be no world of large countries or small countries. There must be a peace that is based on the cooperation of all mankind." This is also a statement of the essence of the principles of the UN Charter, which the current leaders of the European Union have forgotten. [My Emphasis]

The Outlaw US Empire also needs to become enlightened for it remains the West’s vanguard. Just weeks after FDR provided those outstanding words he passed away and was replaced by a person who didn’t believe in those words and who gathered around him people having similar opinions. And thus, when the UN Charter came into legal relevance on 24 October 1945, Truman and the USA were already deeply in violation along with the UK and France. The USSR was also grappling with many aspects of the Charter since it now occupied the enemy nations that tried to eliminate it during WW2 and was trying to arrange a policy to deal with that reality. The three Western nations just went about their usual colonial. hegemonic ways and have never really ceased. The UN/Yalta/Potsdam system isn’t at fault here; it’s the nations that determined they weren’t going to obey the new system that have made it appear to be dysfunctional. And then there was one that was created that is also a gross violator of the Charter and every tenet of civilized human behavior. Does the UN need reforming? Yes, and Lavrov is the first to admit and detail its shortcomings which are mostly administrative and bureaucratic. Yes, I do find it very difficult to understand how Russia can negotiate with the Outlaw US Empire when the Americans are abetting Genocide and committing further acts of Aggressive War.

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