Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has arrived in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, for a significant working visit.
Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answer to a media question during a joint news conference with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation of the Republic of Burundi Albert Shingiro following talks, Bujumbura, May 30, 2023.
It is a pleasure to be in your beautiful country among the friendly and hospitable Burundian people.
Our talks were held in a meaningful and trust-based manner. We touched on every area of cooperation in bilateral affairs and in the international arena.
We positively assessed the recently intensified steps taken by Russian and Burundian representatives in a number of areas. I would like to note cooperation in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy and public health. With regard to nuclear energy, a roadmap has been signed between State Corporation Rosatom and its Burundian partners. Preparations for an intergovernmental agreement in this area and a memorandum on training personnel for the nuclear power industry of the Republic of Burundi in the Russian Federation are nearing completion.
Close cooperation has been established in public health, especially with regard to combating the spread of infectious diseases. In February, Head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova visited Burundi bringing along a large number of COVID-19 test kits and taking part in a ceremony for opening a state-of-the-art laboratory outfitted with Russian equipment at Burundi’s National Institute of Health. This interaction will continue through 2023. A series of events on public health issue, infectious diseases and biological safety will be held in the Russian Federation, and specialists from Burundi will participate.
Broad prospects are opening up for pursuing new ways to interact in connection with the upcoming participation of a high-ranking Burundian delegation in the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in mid-June.
Our humanitarian ties, in particular in education, are expanding rapidly. Mindful of the Burundian students’ great interest in obtaining a higher education in the Russian Federation, we have doubled the number of grants for the new academic year. From now on, 100 grants will be made available annually. A Russian Language Class operated by the Russkiy Mir Foundation at the University of Burundi opened in Bujumbura on May 15. It will be used to improve Russian language teachers’ skills.
When reviewing the main international and regional issues, we found that our approaches are similar regarding the importance of democratising international relations and eliminating injustices which, at the initiative of the US-led collective West, are being ramped up in the international arena.
Russia and Burundi consistently stand for respecting the principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and interconnection, primarily, the principle of the sovereign equality of states, which is grossly violated by the United States and its allies on a daily basis. We appreciate our close coordination in the United Nations, which will continue. We reaffirmed our support for reforming the UN Security Council by addressing the problem of underrepresentation of countries of the Global South, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
We discussed in detail ways to overcome the ongoing crises in Africa. Burundi plays an active role in promoting peace initiatives. The peacekeepers from this country are active in the DRC, the CAR, and Sudan. Burundi’s presidency in the East African Community deserves the highest praise. We are fully supportive of the principle the Minister has just expressed, that is, African solutions to African problems. We consistently support this approach. We will continue to be guided by this when considering specific crisis situations in Africa at the UN Security Council.
We discussed preparations for the second Russia-Africa summit to be held in St Petersburg a couple of months from now. We will be pleased to host a high delegation from your country there.
With regard to the international agenda, we discussed, as Minister Shingiro mentioned, the developments in Ukraine. We highly appreciate Burundi’s balanced position and good understanding of the reasons behind the ongoing events. They go deep into the West using the Kiev regime to create threats to Russia’s security right on our borders and to destroy the legitimate rights of the people who want to remain part of the Russian language and culture. This situation is a hallmark of the course that the West is pursuing in order to ensure its dominance on all continents and regions around the world. Conflicts like this cannot be considered separately from the general geopolitical situation and the designs that the West harbours with regard to almost any country that is, in one way or another, pursuing an independent policy.
Problems around the world abound, which calls for our continued interaction. We agreed on this today and will report to President of the Republic of Burundi Evariste Ndayishimiye in a couple of hours.
Question: You mentioned the situation in Ukraine earlier. We can see that the West has taken a steady course of ramping up weapon supplies to Kiev. The Western elite have become increasingly vocal about exterminating Russians, civilians in Russia. How do you inform your African partners about this, if at all, especially since the situation is now reminiscent of genocide?
Sergey Lavrov: We discussed this in detail today. There is no doubt that the Kiev regime has long taken up openly terrorist methods using weapons that the West is supplying. The West saying that the supplied weapons should not be used against the Russian Federation is another lie. With regard to threats against Russians, we updated our friends today on our assessment of this situation.
Threats to kill Russians have been made by many representatives of the Kiev regime, including Secretary of the Security Council Alexey Danilov, Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak, and several Ukrainian ambassadors abroad. Now, an American senator has opened up on this issue as well.
The West insists that there’s no baseline for resolving the Ukrainian situation other than Zelensky’s infamous “peace formula.” At the same time, his team threatens to kill all Russians and destroy everything Russian in Crimea after liberating it and eastern Ukraine. The upshot is that the West is outright supportive of the genocide. To a certain extent, this is a whole new turn of events, when the West first became a direct participant in the war unleashed against the Russian Federation, and is now calling for genocide.
It is always good to know who is up to what with regard to you. We found out this truth a long time ago. We will operate on the premise that this is where the West stands. We understand that against this background, the ideas expressed by the countries of the Global Majority, including African countries, to the effect that they would like to contribute to the efforts to find a way to overcome this situation, are coming from the heart, out of a desire to be helpful. We appreciate this stance. But these ideas and initiatives should be considered in the context of the geopolitical confrontation that the West launched against the Russian Federation and China, and for that matter, as the G7 recently declared in its documents.
