Telling It Like It Is: Russia's Foreign Ministry Board

The Russian Foreign Ministry

As I prepare to dash off to visit family for Easter on the other side of the nation, I’m posting this press memo issued by MFA that sums-up its Board Meeting:

On March 27, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chaired a meeting of the Ministry's board on Russia's foreign policy and international legal mechanisms: current challenges.

The Board noted that the system of international law based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is undergoing a serious test of strength. As part of the hybrid war they have unleashed, the Westerners are taking a number of illegal steps, including unilateral coercive measures, manipulating the instruments of international justice in the hope of undermining the legitimacy of their competitors' actions, weakening their positions in the international arena, and seizing foreign assets. Russia and its friendly states are subjected to similar pressure on the "legal front". Behind all this is the course of the United States and its allies to undermine the principles of the UN Charter and other universal legal norms, to replace them with a "rules-based order" invented by the West in an attempt to slow down the objective process of forming a fair multipolar world order.

By abusing the international justice system to make unfounded claims against Russia, our opponents have once again "opened a Pandora's box." However, their attempts fail. In particular, the International Court of Justice rejected almost all of Ukraine's claims against Russia under the conventions for the suppression of the financing of terrorism, the elimination of racial discrimination and the prevention of genocide. The Court's decisions turned out to have undesirable consequences for Ukraine and its Western "patrons": it was revealed that there were no grounds for the so-called anti-terrorist operation of Ukraine against the DPR and LPR; the organizations that deceived the world with statements about "racial discrimination against Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars" in Crimea were discredited. Under the Genocide Convention, Ukraine itself found itself in the position of the "accused" in connection with the atrocities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalions in Donbass.

Under these conditions, Russia will not only continue to effectively resist the "legal aggression" of the West, but will also take offensive actions to hold accountable states that violate their international obligations. At the same time, it is important to resist the actions of the West to politicize international justice bodies and other multilateral structures. It was also recognized that it is necessary to step up collective efforts in the legal sphere together with like-minded people against the illegal neocolonial practice of unilateral coercive measures. As a follow-up to the interdepartmental inventory of the legal framework of the Russian Federation's international relations, which was carried out in an interdepartmental format in previous years, the legal analysis of proposals to terminate and suspend treaties that have lost their relevance or ceased to meet the interests of our country will continue on an ongoing basis.

As a result of the discussion, specific measures were identified for the further use of international legal mechanisms to protect Russia's national interests.

And that’s how it is folks.

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