The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...
From 2023-01-27 Media Briefing by Russian Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Maria Zakharova
Question: How can Moscow comment on the US decision to send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine?
Maria Zakharova: I have commented repeatedly on this today. Once again, decisions – regardless of who makes them – on supplying Kiev with tanks indicate that the collective West is deliberately escalating the situation and raising the stakes in the conflict in Ukraine. Obviously, neither Kiev nor the West is willing to seek any diplomatic solution; there are efforts to block negotiations with Russia at the legislative level, reprisals against negotiators inside the country, and demands (rather than requests) for supplying them with more weapons, as Western diplomats claim that any decisive action must be taken on the battlefield at this point, not through diplomatic efforts.
The West is open about its ultimate goal of achieving a strategic defeat on Russia. To achieve this goal, the United States and its allies continue pumping the neo-Nazi Kiev regime with weapons; they are ready to sacrifice the whole of Ukraine and all its inhabitants, whose interests are ignored by Washington and Brussels. Vladimir Zelensky does not care about his people at all.
Some ask why we think this when he is allegedly doing all this for the sake of the people. And I will tell you that Zelensky has never been involved in politics. When he decided to run for president, he kept telling everyone he would be a president of "peace," and the sole thing he was aiming at was "peace." He knelt and swore an oath. It is hard to say what gods he was addressing; judging by his actions, it initially looked like he was a non-believer. Now I think he is a believer – a believer in some force of evil and darkness. We have seen it all. They made a film about him, coming up with a particular public image created for him. A certain way of thinking was imposed on the people, who assumed he would be a commoner representing and following the will of the people. The main thing was the effect. Back then, no one was paying attention, but they should have. With what finances is all this being done? Who was behind it? What technologies were used? He deceived people in a way that I believe no one has deceived anyone in recent history.
So, if he deceived the people, can anyone actually believe him now when he says he needs all these tanks, money, and military resources for the future of Ukraine? He is telling lies just as he lied when kneeling before the Ukrainian people, and just as he lied when he was directly asked if he had any drug addiction. He lied then, he is lying now. And there is only one reason: he has nothing to do with the Ukrainian people. He has never thought about those whose lives are now in his hands. He does not even see them as pawns. During a game of chess, each pawn is valuable. A pawn can become a queen, every pawn is valuable in a chess game because it is your strength. But for him, people are not even pawns; they are nothing to him. Only money, rousing political speeches and applause matter to him; this is solely about personal ambition. Everything else is not just secondary but simply does not exist in the painful logic of this aggressive, "bloody little man."
For its part, Russia has always remained open to the possibilities of using diplomatic and negotiating tools, and we have repeatedly said this. This approach was used and then blocked by Kiev under the direction of the West.
The collective West, NATO, and the EU long ago abandoned diplomacy, choosing a different path instead. They have started creating a security threat by setting a fire, fuelling it, and simply by pushing the European continent towards a global catastrophe.
What is happening now is not about Ukraine, Russia, or even the European continent. It's a much larger, and global issue.
You asked about the US decision to supply American tanks. But why highlight it? Obviously, this stance applies to all countries. Only one country stands apart, Germany. But this is another story.
We remember very well what German tanks are. These are machines that have become a symbol not just of death and a deadly ideology, but of misanthropy and a global, existential threat to the entire planet.
When you read about fascism, Nazism, about the times of the Second World War, I think it is obvious that the SS uniform, the German tanks with the symbols of the Third Reich became a global symbol of humankind plunging into the abyss of hatred, horror, and murder. Red army soldiers and the anti-Hitler coalition pulled all of us out of this abyss, both their contemporaries and those of us who were born later. These were young people who fought at the front, and all those home front workers who supported them. German panzers alone became an anti-symbol which was forever imprinted in the memory of humankind. Today, they expect those tanks to roll through our territory again. At least, that's the assignment they were given.
What does Germany expect? What does Berlin expect? Does it hope that armored vehicles coated with camoflauge paint and bearing iron crosses, the symbols of the German armed forces, will, as before, drive through our cities and villages? We remember how it all ended then. Does Berlin remember? Most importantly, people in Berlin should understand that the Germans have no moral right to supply their armoured vehicles for hostilities against Russia.
I would like to draw your attention to a statement made at the German Parliament on January 25, 2023. Addressing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Petr Bystron, a member of the German Bundestag, noted: "Mr. Chancellor, this is a historic day. You have just destroyed the foundation of Germany's post-war foreign policy. Germany bears special responsibility for the victims of World War II. For a long time, this was a core element of this country's existence. I mean the 6 million Jews, as well as over 20 million men, women and children who were killed in the Soviet Union. Your predecessors, the great Social Democrats Willi Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, accomplished more than anyone else in the name of peace and reconciliation. Willi Brandt even received the Nobel Peace Prize for this. The slogan 'Never again' implied a refusal to send weapons to conflict zones. This has always been the core of German foreign policy."
Everyone writes their names into history in different ways. The people of Germany realise that Berlin has no moral, legal or ethical right to supply armoured vehicles and tanks to kill Russians.
We see plenty of video footage showing that even younger members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine speak Russian, among other things. They have been brainwashed by the Kiev regime, and many of them were forced to deploy to the front after they were rounded up all over Ukraine by the Nazis who, by the way, never leave their bunkers. They have pitted nations, peoples, and even members of the same families against each other, making them into so-called warring parties. Mothers are heartbroken because their sons are on different sides of the barricades. Over the years a lot has been done to tear Ukraine apart, given its difficult history, multinational composition, and the first years of the notorious independence. So many people there dreamed of it. This independence should have begun not with permissiveness, but with responsibility.
Now the bloody dividing lines have passed through the hearts of a huge number of people. These regions have yet to experience the tracks of German tanks.
And yet, Olaf Scholz went for it, dared to take this step. Why? Frankly, because there are historical figures, and there are nobodies. There are people who are ready to go even to certain death for their convictions. Not because of pride or they consider themselves exceptional, but because they understand that this is what humanity means. Other people may have the political power, material resources and support, including electoral support, but they lack the courage to make the right choice, not to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, including the mistakes for which the people of Germany paid an enormous price.
I would like to remind Mr. Scholz of this. I would also like to remind Ms. Baerbock, but it seems to me that it is useless to – or maybe tell him. He probably doesn't know. When German prisoners of war were held in the Soviet Union after our victory, they were not tortured, they were not mocked in the same way as our soldiers and civilians were in German concentration camps. They were fed by the very people who for many years did not have enough, had nothing to eat for many years. I've put it mildly. I would say it differently in everyday circumstances. Those very people fed them.
My grandmother told me about this. All her life she considered bread as the most remarkable food. She told me that the Soviet people, and she, a Russian person, shared that scarce post-war bread with German prisoners who burnt down entire villages, killed children by herding them into houses and setting them on fire. I asked her once, "Grandma, you did not have enough bread for yourself. How could you, having gone through all this, still share your bread with those who were hellbent on killing you?" Do you know, Mr. Scholz, what my grandmother replied? She said, "Masha, we felt sorry for them." It was not the kind of pity you call tolerance. We pitied them then, we loved them, had the mental and spiritual strength to share even with the enemy the greatest necessities.
You in the West have long since lost any notion of true values rooted in love. It is impossible to believe that today, the West is supplying German tanks to a place where they have already brought so much grief and suffering, killing tens of millions of people. It is also impossible to imagine that you know what love, compassion, honor, and conscience are, after all.
I also remember well the visit of the then Foreign Minister of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to Volgograd with an official delegation in 2015. Repentant, he bowed his head in front of the graves of both the Soviet and German soldiers who perished on our land. He said this must never happen again in any way. You're repeating that now.
The day when Germany decided to deliver Leopards to Ukraine is historic, as a German parliament member said, also because it completely proved and cemented the fact which we have long been talking about: the absolute loss of Germany's sovereignty. Olaf Scholz admitted to giving up on an independent German foreign policy forever. He abandoned everything that his predecessors had built in the decades after World War II, and in which, by the way, they succeeded.
I must say that we will not be surprised now if the places of the German Leopards in the Bundeswehr are replaced not by new products of the German military-industrial complex, but by American Abrams tanks. After all, this is exactly what Washington wants. Why ask Berlin? Berlin is no more. Its sovereignty and independent foreign policy are finished. Angela Merkel tried, as much as she could, to defend and balance between Germany's national interests and the enormous pressure exerted by the United States administration on her and on the German people. Americans always treat an occupied country this way.
Washington declared its goals in 2022 during a congressional hearing. The United States under secretary of state Victoria Nuland said that it is necessary to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. As for the United States I have commented upon that already in different parts of our briefing. I'm going to say now that there is no difference in shipping this military equipment, only one country makes a true difference.
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