Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks following a ceremony of laying flowers at memorial plaques in the Ministry building on Diplomatic Worker’s Day, Moscow, February 9, 2024

Friends,

Distinguished guests,

As per tradition, today we are paying our respects to the staff of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and to our friends and neighbours at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade who have died fighting during the Great Patriotic War. We also commemorate our comrades who died in the line of duty and perished during political persecution campaigns. We will never forget them, and we will draw inspiration from their selfless service to the Fatherland.

Today, we will also commemorate our great predecessors. As we do every year, we will lay flowers at the monument to Yevgeny Primakov, whose 95th birth anniversary we will mark in October 2024. The agenda includes major intellectual and research events, which have a practical perspective in the spirit of Yevgeny Primakov, who believed that analysis must be followed by practice.

I would also like to point out that today our foreign missions around the world and their personnel and leaders will bring flowers to the graves of Russian diplomats who were buried, by the will of fate, outside Russia. It is evidence of continuity and historical connection with the countries where events that happened there have created modern-day realities.

Diplomats have always been a major pillar of the state, as we can see from their role in overcoming the isolation of Soviet Rusia after the 1917 revolution and the subsequent creation of “a belt of recognition” of a new state, the Soviet Union, by the leading global powers. This part of our common history should be closely studied by Western countries, which are trying to isolate and “cancel” Russia again. The futility of these efforts is obvious to all relatively reasonable observers and experts and to everyone who is monitoring the current developments and the history of the events that have erupted around Ukraine as a result of the West’s hybrid war against Russia. President Vladimir Putin spoke about this in great detail in his big interview today.

I would like to greet our friends from the CIS countries, our good friends from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and executive officials from the integration organisations working in our common space. It is the second time that you are attending this event. We appreciate your solidarity. It shows once again that we are faced with common tasks. We are carrying on the traditions created when we lived in the same state, which is helping us not only to strengthen our interaction based on the sovereignty of each state but also to act in the interests of our nations.

Today, we will hold an additional event to present state decorations to a large group of our personnel as per the Executive Order of President Putin.

I would like to wholeheartedly congratulate the personnel of the Foreign Ministry and its missions in the Russian regions and abroad once again. We have especially kind words for our veterans who are still on duty, sharing their invaluable experience with young people. I would like to say that we wholeheartedly appreciate their contribution and that we will always support the work of the Veterans Council. We believe that it is vital for ensuring the continuity of the diplomatic service and keeping up the traditions created by our predecessors among young generations.

Congratulations!