Addressing a UN Security Council briefing on the situation in Afghanistan on Dec. 20, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia called the way the West was unfreezing Afghanistan’s reserves for its own purposes “outrageous. The attempts of the U.S. and other major donors to use Afghan money as a pretext for achievement of their own goals are amoral. Creating of artificial preconditions is a dead end. We call for the immediate return of the stolen money to the Afghan people, including to those women and girls that you have been talking about today.”
Nebenzia called out another Western game which is making life impossible in Afghanistan: that of only offering “humanitarian” aid, but no reconstruction or development. Nebenzia called UN Security Council steps (through its Resolution 2615) which expand the channels allowed for humanitarian aid for Afghanistan to be exempted from sanctions fine and good, but added:
