Russian Foreign Ministry

Excerpt from
Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow,

March 23, 2023

Ukraine crisis

Peaceful life is being established on the territories of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, which were liberated from the neo-Nazi Kiev regime. Tens of thousands of specialists from other Russian regions are restoring and rebuilding residential blocks and civilian infrastructure and repairing hundreds of kilometres of roads.

On March 15, 2023, a technological complex of an asphalt concrete plant was installed, and a trial batch of road pavement was produced in the Lugutinsky District, LPR. This will make it possible to upgrade about 410 km of roads, 20 bridges and overpasses. In Mariupol, it is planned to repair 54 km of roads and five bridges, complete the restoration of the city centre, and build another 30 multi-storey buildings with 2,700 apartments in total this year. In Donetsk, a perinatal centre with modern equipment, designed for 149 beds, will open its doors by the end of 2023.

Time has shown that the Kiev authorities succeeded only in destruction. Russia returned to these territories forever (there is no doubt about this) and is actively restoring what was destroyed by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Naturally, they were not the only destroyers. They were actively assisted by those who created them and illegally brought them to power, first of all, the Anglo-Saxon duo of Washington and London. We will talk about this later today.

On March 18, 2023, President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky introduced another package of sanctions against 300 individuals and 141 legal entities. In addition to Russian nationals, the list includes citizens of Iran and Syria, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Restrictive measures were introduced against a number of Russian defence, aviation, shipbuilding and automotive enterprises, including the Kalashnikov and Almaz-Antey concerns, as well as several companies from Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

The Kiev regime has wilfully cranked up the adoption of anti-Russia sanctions. This is being done to keep their own agenda afloat, including in the West, and to continue doing what they do best, where they are truly unequalled – professional scrounging against the backdrop of the total destruction of everything that was created by generations before them.

There is no end to the collective West pumping weapons into the Kiev regime. On March 20, the Pentagon said the amount of US military assistance to Ukraine had exceeded $32.5 billion since the beginning of the special military operation. According to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, nine NATO countries agreed to provide Kiev with more than 150 Leopard tanks to put together nine tank brigades.

The EU announced the allocation of funds to purchase more than 1 million rounds of ammunition for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The money – about $2 billion – will be taken from the European Peace Facility, as before.

On March 21 of this year, UK’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence Annabel Goldie made a few highly irresponsible statements. She announced that London would supply Ukraine with armour piercing rounds, which contain depleted uranium, alongside two Challenger-2 battle tanks. Her words were later confirmed at the official level in the UK. It was not a slip or another mistake. No, this was downright stupidity confirmed at the official level by the UK.

All the above is additional evidence of the aggressive intentions of the West, which does not need peace in Ukraine, in the region, or in the world. The West is obsessed with the manic idea of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and is ready to sacrifice an entire country, other nations, millions of lives for this. They would go to any length to have this fevered mind’s idea, the need to dominate and feel exceptional, confirmed through such destructive logic and its practical implementation.

The recent statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken proved this. Commenting on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, he directly said a ceasefire in Ukraine was unacceptable. Let me remind you that the funding mechanism America’s satellites in Europe are using to send money to the Kiev regime is called the European Peace Facility. Antony Blinken does not believe there is a possibility of a ceasefire. How these things can coexist in one mind is completely incomprehensible. There can be only one answer – one of them is an overt and cynical lie. Which one? That’s obvious. It isn’t a “Peace Facility,” European or any other kind. That facility should have long been renamed a “War Facility.”  That would make more sense and deal with any inconsistency.

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