Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions following talks with Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Shaya al-Zindani, Moscow, August 27, 2024

Ladies and gentlemen,

Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Dr Shaya al-Zindani and I have held substantive and useful talks. We covered nearly all key areas of focus, as well as current and future promising aspects of the traditionally friendly Russia-Yemen relations. We reiterated the fact that these relations are grounded in principles of equality, mutual respect, and a balanced approach to each other’s interests.

In November 2023, we marked the 95th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our countries when we signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. Despite the many challenges currently facing both Russia and Yemen, the principles laid out in that foundational document have so far allowed us to expand broad-based and multifaceted cooperation, which makes strides across various areas.

We highlighted steady progress in mutual trade. Following the visit to Moscow by Prime Minister of Yemen Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak in February 2024, steps were taken to reinforce the upward trend in bilateral trade. In 2023, our trade almost doubled, and this momentum has remained unchanged in the first half of 2024. This reflects the strong interest of both nations’ business communities in expanding trade and investment ties, especially in the context of the ongoing stabilisation of the socioeconomic situation in Yemen.

We agreed to resume the activities of the bilateral intergovernmental commission on trade, economic, and scientific and technical cooperation. The commission’s co-chairs will meet in Moscow in the latter half of September. We anticipate a full-on plenary session of this important intergovernmental body to take place before the year runs out.

We also discussed maintaining contacts between our respective military departments, which have a long and positive track record. Most of the officers currently serving in Yemen’s armed forces and other security agencies received training in the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation. Tens of thousands of specialists in civilian fields were trained in our country as well, and are now working for the benefit of Yemen’s economy and various industries.

In response to a widespread interest shown by Yemenis in studying in Russia, we have decided to increase the number of scholarships awarded annually. Currently, 140 scholarships are available. Starting with the 2024-2025 academic year, an additional 30 scholarships will be provided. We plan to continue increasing the number of scholarships for our Yemeni friends in the coming years.

We addressed the military-political situation in and around the Republic of Yemen. The devastating conflict has been ongoing for nearly a decade now, leaving Yemen divided. Today, we reaffirmed our commitment to supporting all efforts aimed at achieving national reconciliation. We had high hopes for the mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman. Regrettably, these efforts were interrupted by a series of events that followed October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israeli civilians. Back then, we all denounced this terrorist attack and unanimously rejected the legitimacy of the subsequent response, which amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people, regardless of gender or age which constitutes a flagrant violation, just like any act of terror. Collective punishment is a breach of international humanitarian law. The ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip continues to provoke widespread outrage globally and has triggered retaliatory actions from various groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and several groups in Iraq, including Ansar Allah, which controls Sana’a and a significant portion of the Yemeni territory. Ansar Allah has announced that in response to Israel’s actions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a special regime will be imposed to prevent ships carrying goods for Israel from passing through.

We believe such actions pose serious threats to maritime security. While we support efforts to ensure maritime safety, we cannot agree with what the United States and the United Kingdom are doing as they grossly distort the UN Security Council resolution. Under the guise of ensuring maritime safety, they have launched a military operation against Yemen and launched missile and bomb strikes on Yemeni territory, further aggravating the situation.

We want everyone to sit down and talk and would welcome the resumption of mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen, Mr Hans Grundberg, in order to steer the situation back to a political and diplomatic course.

I mentioned the Gaza Strip crisis earlier. Our approaches overlap in this regard. The violence must stop immediately, and efforts to address pressing humanitarian issues must be doubled, tripled, or even decupled. Meanwhile, while addressing the current matters of restoring normalcy, we must not forget about the deep-running issues in the region, particularly the unresolved issue of establishing a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, which would coexist in peace and security with Israel, as mandated by numerous UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

We are grateful to Yemen for understanding what’s going on in Ukraine and for its balanced and measured stance on this matter. We, in turn, remain committed to our well-known approaches that President Putin consistently reaffirms. These approaches stress the importance of restoring justice and ensuring the rights enshrined in the UN Charter for all residents of these territories regardless of race, gender, language, or religion. This is the root of all problems. The junta that came to power in Ukraine in February 2014 with the direct support from Western countries declared an outright war on the Russian language and everything that is Russian. If there are people out there who do not understand what the Russian people, Orthodox believers who practice their faith in canonical churches, think about this, it will be difficult for them to understand what’s going on and to resist the temptation to say the same thing over and over again: there’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and nothing else matters. The UN Charter includes many other obligations that have been torn up by the Kiev regime and its handlers. One such obligation is to protect human rights, and another is to respect the right of nations to self-determination.

Overall, we had a productive discussion. We agreed to continue coordinating our steps at the UN, and we will do so. I appreciate the Minister’s visit.

Question: How would you comment Ukraine’s demands as set forth in The Guardian? They seek the green light to use the Storm Shadow missiles to target Moscow and St Petersburg as a way to force Moscow to negotiate.

Sergey Lavrov: This is blackmail, an attempt to pretend that the West seeks to avoid any excessive escalation. In reality, they are full of mischief. Avoiding escalation is not what the West is after. To put it into plain language, they are simply picking a fight.

I think that this has become obvious to everyone. I have recently cited John Kirby, who is the White House National Security Communications Advisor. A couple of months ago, he said that escalation would be dangerous, since it would be extremely ill-advised to let the situation slide into a world war and that Europe would be the one to suffer in the process. Recently, John Kirby said this again. For Americans, any talk about the third world war comes down to something that would affect Europe alone, and God forbid if it ever happened. This is quite telling, since this idea reflects the mindset of the American planners and geostrategy experts who believe that they can simply sit the whole thing out. I think that it is important to understand in this situation that we have our own doctrine, including the one governing the use of nuclear weapons. An effort to update it is underway. Moreover, these Americans are well aware of the provisions it sets forth. This fact transpires from the Freudian slips they make when they say that having a third world war would be a bad thing because they do not want Europe to suffer. This is what this American mindset comes down to. They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also, as it turns out, Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them.

We have long been hearing speculation about authorising Ukraine to use not only the Storm Shadow missiles, but also US-made long-range missiles. There was an anonymous source in Washington who said that they were working on it. This source purported that their overall view of Ukraine’s request is quite positive. I will stop at that. President Vladimir Putin said all about it quite a while ago.

Now, all we can do is confirm once again that playing with fire is a dangerous thing for the men and women in charge of nuclear weapons across the Western world, but they are playing with matches as if they never grew up.

Question: What is your assessment of the situation surrounding the detention in France of Pavel Durov, the Telegram founder? Has Paris responded to the Russian note in any way? Could an eventual agreement by Pavel Durov to cooperate with the French investigative authorities prompt the Foreign Ministry to stop using this social media platform? How would this affect Moscow’s relations with Paris?

Sergey Lavrov: Let me begin with the last part of your question. The relations between Moscow and Paris are at their all-time low, which is attributable, among other things, to France’s position on the freedom of speech and spreading information in general, as well as respecting journalisms as a profession.

Long before the current events, I mean many years ago when the Ukraine crisis had yet to break out in the open, we took issue with the fact that the French authorities denied accreditation to RT and Sputnik. We reached out to the corresponding services within the Elysee Palace on multiple occasions and made sure that Emmanuel Macron’s aides hear our concerns. However, they remained inflexible on this matter and kept saying that RT and Sputnik were state-run propaganda mouthpieces rather than media outlets. This is only one of the things defining the way our French colleagues treat the freedom of speech and the media.

Moreover, in 1990, when the so-called end of history, to use Francis Fukuyama’s expression, happened, it was France which initiated the adoption by the OSCE of a special declaration containing a solemn promise to ensure and totally guarantee free access to any information for the media on their territory, as well as in other OSCE member states. This was set forth in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe. As long as the USSR was breaking apart, while the Russian Federation found itself in a state in which is existed in the early and mid-1990s, the West insisted that what they presented as a sacrosanct commitment be honoured, primarily by our country. As time passed, we came back to our roots and restored our national identity, came back to where we came from and started to assert our own interests on the international stage. This is when the West started diverting from this very commitment. Today, we are the only ones within the OSCE to remind others about our shared commitment to ensure access to information both within and outside our countries. All the others have adopted all these laws and guidelines and now accuse Pavel Durov of failing to comply with one of them. Meanwhile, a Belgian company tasked with overseeing compliance with this law within the European Union has been saying that it has not voiced any complaints in this regard. This goes to say that there are a lot of weird things here.

We have known the way France treats the freedom of speech for quite a while now. As I have already said, our relations have hit rock bottom, and this was not our fault. Emmanuel Macron has been the leading voice both within NATO and the European Union when it comes to calling for tightening their policies regarding Russia, delivering more military aid to Ukraine and ensuring that Vladimir Zelensky’s Nazi regime wins on the battlefield. You can see that. There is nothing to add here.

As for specific actions on our behalf. They are reviewing our diplomatic note and we are waiting for their answer. You probably know that the United Arab Emirates are also working along the same lines. They also have a group of lawyers who have requested immediate access to Pavel Durov.

Now to your question about using this platform. It offers a solution that is both convenient and secure. If anyone had any doubts, at least now that they have clearly taken a cue from someone to detain Pavel Durov and are threatening to severely punish him in the hope of getting the encryption keys, by acting this way the French have proven that Telegram is actually a reliable and popular social media platform.

There was a time when we had our own grievances with Telegram. But this was a strictly legal matter. The law guided us in our efforts and we were able to resolve these issues. This was never a matter of infringing upon Pavel Durov’s freedom or the freedom of his team. Moreover, he said many times that he would not compromise the principles that underlie Telegram’s operation.

Question: Regarding the situation in the Middle East, could you please share your thoughts on it? Is there a chance that the parties will agree on a ceasefire any time soon?

Sergey Lavrov: The minister and I have provided our assessments and comments on this issue. One gets a strong impression that not everyone needs a ceasefire. Moreover, some participants of this process badly need to keep hostilities going and forcefully maintain the situation as it is in anticipation of changes in the global political landscape. They outright mention the US elections, meaning that the Israeli leaders are waiting for news from Washington to come in early November in hope that this news will alleviate international pressure on Israel in favour of ending the harrowing operation in Gaza, which violates international humanitarian law and has claimed over 40,000 civilian lives, more than half of whom are women, children, and the elderly.

I have cited the statistics earlier, and I wouldn’t want them to be forgotten. This happened within 10 months - 40,000 people died. In ten years of the Ukraine crisis that followed the coup, half as many civilians were impacted on both sides in Donbass. Compare 10 years to 10 months. To reiterate, like all other countries, we condemned the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023. However, using collective punishment as retribution is an illegal thing to do. It violates every principle of international humanitarian law. Statements made by Israeli military leaders after the start of this operation to the effect that “there are no civilians there” are particularly distressing and outrageous. Allegedly, everyone in Gaza aged three and up is a terrorist. This is a dangerous line of thinking. More than anyone, our Israeli partners should know better than to make statements of that kind, which smack of a completely different ideology, one that causes suffering to Jews themselves.

Question: On an earlier occasion, President Zelensky stated in an interview with Indian media that he would like to hold the second summit on peaceful settlement in Ukraine in a country from the Global South. Would Russia participate in it if it were indeed held in a Global South country?

Sergey Lavrov: The next summit implies continuing an initiative of sorts, but there is only one “initiative” there. It started out as the “Copenhagen format” and morphed into the “Burgenstock conference.” However, all these processes rely on an absolutely bleak non-starter “peace formula” proposed by Zelensky. Only dreamers in Kiev and the West can expect Russia to fall for any of the functions promoting this “formula” as the only viable solution.

It is about a game, nothing else. They want to put us in a situation where we jump at something that Zelensky finds suitable. President Putin has repeatedly said that negotiations where no one imposes ultimatums on anyone are the way forward.

It was the case in February 2014, when Viktor Yanukovich, then President of Ukraine, came to terms with the opposition (under the guarantees provided by France, Germany, and Poland) to create a government of national unity and hold nationwide elections. The next day, this honest deal was shattered by the opposition incited by the United States and other Western countries, which instantly recognised the results of the bloody unconstitutional coup. Had they fulfilled this agreement, Ukraine would now be within the 1991 borders, including Crimea.

That was followed by an agreement in Minsk in February 2015 that was approved by the UN Security Council. You know how the President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko, former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and then French President Francois Hollande admitted that none of them intended to comply with the UN Security Council resolution. They needed to gain some time. Honest talks were held in Minsk, where presidents and the chancellor discussed and negotiated things for long 17 hours. It was a balance of interests, but they chose not to act on it. Now it’s clear why.

By the same token, in Istanbul, they refused to fulfill the initialed agreement, because neither putschists in February 2014, nor Petr Poroshenko in February 2015, nor Vladimir Zelensky in April 2022 needed an honest agreement. All they needed was a piece of paper with an ultimatum on it.

Not all Ukrainians are naive. They were fully aware of the fact that an ultimatum these days, especially with Russia, is an utterly senseless proposition. However, the calculus relied on the Anglo-Saxons and all kinds of Borrells in Brussels, Ursula von der Leyens and Macrons from Paris telling them in unison that Ukraine must defeat Russia on the battlefield, and they were doing their best to make it happen. That is, the West is deterring Ukraine from engaging in regular talks based on the universally accepted principles and is doing everything to have Ukraine continue the escalation (as they call it) in hopes, we are getting increasingly suspicious of that, that we will lose our cool and do something that will allow the West to “change the chessboard.” It won’t work.

We will fulfil our goals and do so just like President Putin said, in a way that will meet our interests in the best way: first, save our people and, second, protect the people whom the Nazi regime in Kiev declared terrorists and deprived them of basic rights, including the right to their own religion, faith, language, and much more. They will not be able to provoke us. All these “burgenstocks” and “peace formulas” are the work of the devil.

If the West (this is not about Zelensky) is truly interested in normalising the situation in Europe, which is making the Europeans themselves groan and suffer, we should sit down for talks without clutching pieces of paper that read “Zelensky’s formula” and start having candid talks. The President of Russia confirmed that we were ready for this. I just cited three examples of us supporting such talks. Now that they have lied three times, who will trust them? But let’s see. They must draw their own conclusions.