PRESS RELEASES AND NEWS
15.04.2018
Embassy Press Officer replies to a media question on the legal basis of air strikes against SyriaQuestion: The UK has published its legal position claiming that the legal basis for the strikes against Syria is “humanitarian intervention”. Does Russia agree with that?
Answer: First of all, the concept of “humanitarian intervention”, actively promoted by the West in the 1990s, has been rejected by the international community. As such, it cannot possibly serve as a legal basis for any use of force. International law only allows to use force in self-defence or under a Security Council mandate.
The fact that Britain refers to “humanitarian intervention” is therefore a direct acknowledgement of the unlawfulness of the air strikes. The specific arguments used by the UK in support of its position confirm this further.
The gist of British reasoning is that the whole international community recognizes that a “new” chemical attack in Syria is imminent and that only the air strikes could prevent it. Yet, let alone a new attack, the international community is not convinced that a chemical attack took place in Douma, and wants to see the results of the ongoing OPCW investigation. When international monitors are arriving in Damascus, and – more broadly – when the Syrian government and large parts of the opposition are moving towards creating a constitutional committee to end the war, to say that “there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved” is hypocritical, to say the least.
We should add that today, speaking at the Andrew Marr Show, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson admitted that the strikes were not about saving lives or actually prevening President Assad from further chemical attacks, but should simply be seen as a “message”.
Let’s leave legal details to lawyers. But one doesn’t need deep expertise to see that we are dealing with an attack under a false pretext, a false legal basis and a false result.
LATEST EVENTS
Joint Statement of the Participants in the Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan.
On October 6, 2021, the NATO Secretariat officially announced NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s decision to withdraw the accreditation of eight members of the Russian Permanent Mission to NATO on November 1, 2021, as well as to reduce the overall number of mission personnel to 10. No reason for this decision has been provided.
We express our utter indignation at the article in ‘The Sun’ claiming that a ‘Russian spy’ was present at the recent Conservative Party Conference. This low-grade scoop is of no surprise though, as we got used to this kind of disinformation being produced by the British media.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 29th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Moscow.
Today in Geneva, interagency delegations from the United States and the Russian Federation convened for the second meeting of the bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue since President Biden and President Putin committed to an integrated, deliberate, and robust process in June. The United States delegation was led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman, and the Russian delegation was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. The discussion was intensive and substantive.
YouTube, a video hosting service, has committed an act of unprecedented information aggression against RT media holding’s German-language projects with the obvious tacit consent of Germany, if not at its insistence.
It is worth noting that immediately after the incident in Salisbury Russia suggested that a comprehensive and transparent cooperation by law enforcement agencies of the two countries would allow to establish the facts of what had happened. Instead, the UK chose to conduct investigation unilaterally and behind closed doors. Now, we hear once again that yet another Russian national was, as a ‘member of the GRU’, allegedly involved in the attempted murder. Just as was the case with earlier claims made during this investigation, neither the public nor Russia have been provided with concrete evidence. To present the fact of a certain individual entering or leaving the UK on particular dates in March 2018 as a newly obtained information is nothing but laughable.
It is symptomatic that our British counterparts plainly ignore the many positive developments in our electoral system. These include online voting used for the first time at the national level, as well as new steps taken to strengthen the system of civic control over elections, including observers at polling stations, live video streaming, speedy publication of results by polling station. Rather than recognising these achievements of the civil society, the UK continues with hollow claims of ‘undermining political plurality’ and ‘holding of elections on Ukraine’s sovereign territory’.
We have taken note of an event that was held in Kiev on August 23 and was entitled a “Crimea Platform Summit.” The stated aim of this political project, developed with active involvement of government experts from the United States, the UK and the European Union and funded by the United States Agency for International Development, is “the de-occupation of Crimea and its reintegration with Ukraine.” The participants involved are just right for this goal – mainly being NATO countries and some international organisations sharing a common delusion that the Crimean Peninsula should be part of the current Ukrainian state and that it can be torn away from the Russian Federation by increasing political and economic pressure on Russia.
We took notice of the new personal sanctions imposed by the UK on the Russian nationals for what is claimed to be ‘their direct responsibility for the poisoning of Alexey Navalny’. It is indicative indeed that sanctions are being rubber-stamped in a process which is completely detached from actual facts and looks like a formality, a way to ‘mark anniversaries’.
all messages  | 
Tweet Follow @russianembassy