On Feb. 17, on the eve of the Russia-U.S. talks in Riyadh, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia asserted before the United Nations Security Council Briefing on Ukraine, why it is necessary that no EU member state should be permitted to participate in the Ukraine war peace discussion taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Nebenzia detailed the West’s sabotage of the Minsk peace accord between Kiev and the Donbass regions, stating: “As became clear from the confessions of a number of former senior politicians (specifically, [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, [French President] François Hollande and [Ukraine President] Pyotr Poroshenko), Western sponsors of the Kiev regime needed the Minsk agreements purely as a ‘smokescreen’ to arm Kiev and prepare it for war with Russia. This is precisely what finally compelled us to begin our special military operation.”
The overwhelming difficulty is the mindset of the EU leaders: “They are blinded by primordial Russophobia, maniacal desire to defeat our country on the battlefield using to this end those Ukrainians who are left alive. Today’s European elites are unfortunately incapable of thinking strategically and can hardly even imagine any security formulas involving Russia, since for many years, they have been shaping—covertly or overtly—exclusively anti-Russian political and military configurations. We do not know how long it will take to heal their minds (if it is possible in principle), but it is clear that they won’t do for guarantors or even mediators. We can tell it also from what was said the other day by European participants of the Munich Security Conference—their statements were reckless, hawkish and divorced from reality.”
