Lavrov defends attack on Ukraine before UN Security Council

Kyiv Around three and a half weeks before the international agreement on grain exports from Ukraine expired, Russia again threatened to end the agreement. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended the war of aggression against the neighboring country that had begun 14 months ago.

“Terrorist attacks by the Kiev regime threaten a renewed extension of the grain deal after May 18,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday night. Specifically, Russia, which itself launched the war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, accuses the neighboring country of having used drones to attack the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet on the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in March and April. Initially, there was no reaction from Kiev.

>> Read also: Moscow is threatening the end of the grain agreement more clearly than ever

Russia repeatedly threatens to rupture the grain agreement, which was last extended by 60 days in mid-March – albeit with changing arguments. Moscow, for example, has recently repeatedly criticized that the agreed sanctions for its own fertilizer exports are not being sufficiently implemented.

After the start of its war of aggression, Russia had blocked the neighboring country’s Black Sea ports for months. As Ukraine is one of the largest agricultural exporters, fears of a massive rise in food prices and a hunger crisis in the world’s poorest countries grew. Last summer, the United Nations and Turkey brokered an end to the blockade in the form of the grain agreement.

Selenski: We are already preparing for the coming winter

According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine is already preparing for the coming winter after months of Russian attacks on energy plants. “We made decisions to restore the energy sector after the Russian attacks,” Zelensky said in his evening video address Monday after visiting the Zhytomyr region west of Kyiv.

Since last fall, Russia has repeatedly fired missiles and drones at Ukrainian power plants. As a result, there were repeated power and heating failures in many regions of Ukraine, especially during the cold season. Kiev has therefore repeatedly accused Moscow of “energy terrorism”.

Lavrov defends invasion of Ukraine before UN Security Council

Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov accused the West of hegemonic plans and defended his country’s invasion of Ukraine. At a UN Security Council meeting in New York, Lavrov asserted that the “Ukraine question” cannot be viewed in isolation from the geopolitical developments in which NATO has threatened Russia’s security in the region for years.

The controversial meeting of the most powerful UN body was scheduled by Russia given its presidency of the Council. In light of Russia’s war of aggression, the session entitled “Effective Multilateralism by Defending the Principles of the United Nations Charter” was seen as a provocation by many countries.

This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the Ukraine war:

“The president is mega active”: Kremlin denies Putin doppelganger

At the same time, the Kremlin once again rejected suspicions that Russian President Vladimir Putin was being represented by doubles at public appearances. “You’ve probably heard that Putin is said to have many doubles who work in his place while he’s in a bunker. That’s another lie,” Peskov told young people at an educational event in Moscow. “You see what kind of President we have. He was and is mega active. We who work with him can hardly keep up with him.”

Speculations about one or even more Putin doubles keep coming up – most recently, for example, in view of a visit by the Kremlin chief to Russian-occupied war zones in Ukraine. There is no known evidence that there is actually a double of Putin at official meetings.

More: Current news on the development of the Ukraine war can be found in our news blog