April 26, 2024 (EIRNS)—Maxim Buyakevich, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the OSCE, took on NATO’s deepening involvement in Ukraine during an OSCE meeting in Vienna on April 25. “Today, at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting, Western sponsors of the Kyiv regime claimed that, through the support of their protegees in Ukraine, they protect their own security,” he said, according to excerpts published by the Russian Foreign Ministry. “But Russia did not threaten and now does not threaten NATO countries. On the contrary, for the past 30 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to the East in violation of its own guarantees given to Moscow, as well as moved military infrastructure closer to our borders.”
Buyakevich took note of Biden’s recent comments that 90% of the military assistance for Ukraine in the war budget bill would be spent in the U.S. (see below for more on that). “Investments of Washington and its satellites in an armed confrontation in thousands of kilometers from their own borders are considered by them as a way to support their economy at the cost of thousands of lives of Ukrainians and other Russian people, as well as at the cost of destruction in cities and sufferings of civilians,” he said. “It is no coincidence that the U.S. and U.K. consistently discourage their puppets in Kyiv from achieving a viable settlement, which would have taken into account the legitimate interests of Russia. They just demand to continue armed hostilities and provide for it new parties of weapons—obviously, until the moment when mobilized Ukrainians as a resource will run out completely.”
Buyakevich also remarked that Russian forces continue to make progress in the special military operation. “Over the past week, a number of tactically significant settlements in the Donetsk People’s Republic have been liberated, which has increased the operational capabilities of the Russian military,” he said. “It is obvious to the leaders of the Kyiv regime, as well as to their supervisors in NATO countries, that even with new military supplies, Zelenskyy’s armed formations are not and will not be able to ensure a military turnaround on the battlefield. The collapse of the Kyiv regime is inevitable and is only a matter of time, both due to the obvious incomparability of the military potentials of the confronting parties, as well as due to the steadily declining motivation in the Ukrainian armed formations.”
