The Ambassador of Russia to Uganda, H.E Vladlen Semivolos says sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S and Western countries will not prevent the former from achieving the objectives of the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.
With the approval of Russia’s Parliament, the country’s leader, Vladimir Putin on February 24 this year, announced the beginning of a special military operation in Ukraine in relation to the treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance signed with the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.
The operation has however, for a long time, been described by the U.S and the West as an unprovoked and unjustified war started by Russia for no particular reason.
So, what is Russia’s mission in Ukraine? Well, Russia’s Ambassador to Uganda, H.E Vladen Semivolos answered this and explained more on the conflict, in an exclusive interview with Plus News this week.
H.E Semivolos notes that Russia, through the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, seeks to achieve mainly three objectives which include demilitarization of Ukraine so that there would be no weapons posing a threat to Russia and protecting the people of Donetsk and Lugansk Republics.
The other objective, he says, is to denazify Ukraine by way of not only canceling laws encouraging Nazi ideology and practices, but also withdrawing any legislation, which discriminates Russians.
Protecting Donbass people who don’t glory Nazism
It should be remembered that in 2014, dozens of the Donbass people and any Ukrainians who did not agree with the policy of banning the Russian language and refused to glorify Nazism were burned alive by Ukrainian Nazis in Odessa.
Since then, there has been persistent bombing of peaceful cities, terrorizing and killing civilians, women and children there.
“Thousands of people in Donetsk and Lugansk have been killed with continuous fire of residential areas, all happening with the knowledge and support of the U.S and NATO,” says Ambassador Vladlen Semivolos.
He says that since the anti-constitutional coup in 2014 that brought to power the current regime in Kiev the West has been unconditionally backing Ukraine in all its endeavors, helping to establish a hostile “anti-Russia” entity on its grounds as a tool to contain our country.
“It poured Ukraine with weapons, sent numerous military instructors to train “national volunteer battalions” that publicly preach Nazi ideas, wear the symbols and tattoos that reproduce the swastikas and emblems of the Nazi SS,” he reiterates.
He adds that in January and February this year, Ukrainian authorities amassed 120,000 military personnel near the Donbass republics, artillery attacks intensified. “We have documents that confirm that they prepared to take Donbass by force.”
According to the Ambassador, the whole society of Ukraine is being influenced by NAZI ideology, which undermines Russia’s security,” Semivolos says.
“They have more than 1400 officially registered nationalist entities which follow NAZI ideology. These are the people we are trying to bring to book. We spoke on many occasions to the western world that we will not allow a country completely governed by NAZI ideology on our wall.”
“We will not let them be allowed into NATO. We told that very clearly to our European partners and the U.S. They hear us but they don’t listen to us. They don’t not listen to our complaints, they do not listen to our concerns,” he adds.
He explains that for the last 8 years and before that, the West and the U.S were “building a sort of Anti-Russia State ready to fight Russia. They were readying Ukraine to fight us.”
Demilitarization of Ukraine
According to H.E Semivolos, the Special Military Operation in Ukraine followed years of abuse targeting Russians, the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, and yet Russia’s appeals to NATO and the United States that further NATO expansion in the direction of Russian borders, direct calls to prevent Ukraine’s accession to NATO and to stop weaponizing and militarizing Ukraine were given no attention.
“As one might recollect, in 1989 presidents of the Soviet Union and the USA jointly pronounced the end of the Cold war. The Berlin Wall fell down,” explains the Ambassador.
He says as one of the efforts to dissolve the war, it was agreed that that NATO would not move eastwards even by an inch and that not a single piece of NATO’s military infrastructure would appear near Russian borders.
“The World knows what happened next. President Vladimir Putin has spoken about this on many occasions. Washington and NATO deceived us. At its own discretion, NATO started pushing its way to the East. We witnessed five consecutive waves of NATO expansion resulting in its military machine and nuclear war infrastructure in close vicinity of our borders,” he says.
H.E Semivolos says that when Russia reminded the West about their promises, they (West) said they had never made any, but when proof was presented, they then changed position and said that there might have been some verbal agreement, but only to “calm us down”.
He notes: “When the contact line came too close to us, we introduced a number of security initiatives aimed to achieve legally binding arrangements that would provide security for Europe. For almost 30 years, we have been trying to come to an understanding with leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal security.”
“In response to our proposals, we faced lies and even blackmail, while the Alliance continued to expand despite our protests and legitimate security concerns,” he adds.
The Ambassador says that NATO disregarded Russia’s numerous proposals to implement what they agreed within the framework of Russia-NATO dialogue.
He explains that the main issue is the promise that no country should strengthen its own security at the expense of the security of others.
“They replied that legal guarantees of security could only be provided within NATO and not in the context of relations with the Russian Federation,” H.E Semivolos says.
President Putin in November last year tabled new initiatives on European security and later next month in November made another attempt to reach agreement with the United States and its allies on the principles of European security and NATO’s non-expansion. Russia went as far as drafting respective documents for US and other NATO countries.
“They flatly refused saying that they would not give us legally binding security guarantees. Trying to substantiate this position, the West claims that NATO is a defensive alliance and that we should not be worried since nothing threatens our security,” the Ambassador told Plus News.
But, this he says Russia has no guarantee of any truth in it given NATO’s previous aggression in other countries.
“We have no reason to believe this. Recent history proves that in every part of the Globe where the United States and NATO inculcate their understanding of democracy, the result is blood, suffering, spread of terrorism and extremism,” he says.
He reiterates that the world still remembers NATO’s bloody military operation against Belgrade which happened without the UN Security Council’s sanction, killing thousands with combat aircrafts and missiles.
“The bombing of peaceful cities and vital infrastructure, killing civilians, women and children lasted for several weeks. While attacking civilian targets, NATO provided no evidence that Serbian armed forces had occupied those facilities,” says Semivolos.
“They bombed a bridge with a passenger train crossing it. They bombed the television center saying that it was an element of Serbian propaganda machine. They bombed the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China killing several Chinese journalists,” he adds.
He says the same befell Iraq, Libya where the illegal use of military power against Libya ruined to ashes this once prosperous state, which served as a model to many African countries, created a huge hotbed of international terrorism.
“The tragedy brought by NATO for hundreds of thousands and even millions of people not only in Libya but also in the rest of the Africa, has led to a large-scale exodus from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe,” he says.
“The introduction of western values to Libya led to the appearance of slave markets in this country, which the West propaganda machine prefers not to notice,” reveals the Ambassador.
He recalls that whereas, the western media is used to tell one side of the story, in the Libya situation, not a single western media dropped cried for thousands of innocent people who were killed, including the children and grandchildren of Muammar Kaddafi.
“The same scenario was prepared for Syria. The US military operation in that country without the Syrian government’s consent or UN Security Council’s sanctions can only be defined as aggression and intervention with a view to dismember this country and take control of Syrian oil. Russia managed to save Syria from the fate of Libya,” he explains.
“We are well aware that they are very good at inventing pretexts for their invasions of sovereign nations. A bright example is Iraq. It is widely known that they invaded this state on the pretext of having allegedly reliable information of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” he adds.
To prove that accusation, H.E Semivolos says, the U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell produced a test tube allegedly containing a sample of Iraqi chemical weapons but later turned out that all of that was a fake, and that Iraq did not have any chemical weapons.
“Thousands of Iraqis including their leader Saddam Hussein were killed, the devastation by NATO airstrikes was enormous. The world community watched in horror the deeds of the “civilized” West bringing destruction and loss of life to the sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, ” he says.
The Ambassador notes that before the final decision was made to launch the special military operation in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin at a news conference in the Kremlin had brought forward initiatives on creating conducive security architecture in Europe.
He, Semivolos says, clearly stated that Russia would not ever accept NATO’s plan to turn Ukraine into its outpost on our border allowing the West to look at us through crosshairs.
“For years we sought to raise awareness on this issue. The West remained impervious to our efforts, disregarded our appeals. Numerous assessments by world-famous political analysts, who underscored that further expansion of NATO to the East with a view to gain military foothold on the Ukrainian territory would have disastrous consequences, were also ignored, ” explains the Ambassador.
He says that with the support of the West and the U.S, Ukraine started dangerous ‘games’ aiming at acquiring nuclear and biological weapons. It became a clear and present threat to the very existence of our state,” he says.
In fact, the final straw was a statement by President Zelensky of Ukraine on February 19 that Ukraine would like to acquire nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no doubt that such nuclear weapons would be used against Russia since it takes on 4 to 5 minutes to reach Moscow if such American or Ukrainian ballistic missiles appeared in the North East of Ukraine near Russian border.
“It was a red line for us.
They have crossed this red line. They did not leave us with any other option to defend Russia and our people. We were forced to take an immediate action,” he adds.
Below are some of the photos of Ukraine soldiers and people with NAZI insignia and symbols;
