Russian envoy claims West is determined to destroy Russia

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western nations of “holding back” on implementing the Minsk agreements brokered by the two countries

A week before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s U.N. ambassador claimed that the West is driven by its determination to destroy Russia and declared: “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”

Western ambassadors shot back, accusing Russia of using a Security Council meeting it called on lessons learned from the failure to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists that began in 2014 to justify what France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere called “the unjustifiable” – Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor on February 24, 2022.

Friday's meeting in the council — the only international venue where Russia regularly faces Ukraine and its Western supporters — put a spotlight on the deep chasm between the warring parties as the conflict moves into its second year with no end in sight, tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, and new military offensives expected.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western nations including France and Germany of “holding back” on implementing the Minsk agreements brokered by the two countries to end the conflict between Ukraine and the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk in the country’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east that flared in April 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“You knew very well that the Minsk process for you is just a smoke screen, so as to rearm the Kyiv regime and to prepare it for war against Russia in the name of your geopolitical interest,” Nebenzia said.

U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Mills accused Russia of failing to implement “a single commitment it made” in the Minsk agreements while the other signatories — France, Germany, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — “sought to implement them in good faith.”

France’s De Riviere said his country and Germany have worked “tirelessly” since 2015 to promote dialogue between parties. “The difficulties encountered in implementing these agreements can never serve as justification or mitigating circumstances for Russia’s choice to end the dialogue with violence,” he stressed.