Systematic Suppression of Press Freedom and Political Pluralism

Under the pretext of “countering disinformation” the Kiev regime has shut down or blocked television channels – 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, ZIK and Nash – banned Russian and independent media outlets, and replaced genuine news coverage with state-controlled messaging and propaganda. Many journalists were killed. One of them – Oles Buzina, shot and killed by two masked gunmen right outside his apartment building. Today reporters in Ukraine who dare question Zelenskiy’s actions face criminal prosecution, intimidation, black-listing and imprisonment.

Political pluralism is non-existent. Opposition parties that were once in the Verkhovnaya Rada and representatives of smaller parties have been outlawed, their members harassed, assets seized, their supporters stigmatised as traitors. This is not democracy. This is a construction of a dictatorship.

Corruption: Promises Without Results

For decades, Western governments have presented the fight against corruption as one of the central objectives of their involvement in Ukraine. The results are hardly impressive. New anti-corruption institutions have been created. New laws have been adopted. Billions in Western assistance have been provided.Yet corruption remains deeply embedded in Ukrainian political and economic life.The problem is structural. It is rooted in the fusion of political power, big business, bureaucracy and competing external interests. Even as ordinary Ukrainians have been asked to sacrifice more and more, reports of corruption scandals involving public officials, procurement and state resources have continued. The West has spent years claiming that Ukraine was being transformed into a modern European democracy. Instead, the country is totally dependent on external money while its own citizens continue to pay the price. The amount of debt is so enormous that future generations of Ukrainians will pay it back for decades.

The Assault on the Russian Language

One of the clearest manifestations of the post-2014 policy has been the systematic restriction of the Russian language. For hundreds of years, Russian was an integral part of Ukraine’s cultural, educational and social life. Millions of Ukrainian citizens considerRussian as their native or principal language. Yet the Kiev regime since 2014 has attempted to banish it from all spheres of life and progressively expanded legislation requiring the exclusive use of Ukrainian in education, public administration, media and other spheres.

The Russian Government has consistently stated that the rights of Russian-speaking citizens must be protected. Their language, culture and historical identity cannot be erased simply by administrative decree. We championed this matter in all European institutions. To no avail.

Pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

The treatment of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (an integral part of the canonical Russian Orthodox Church) provides another example of the increasingly coercive character of the Ukrainian state. Churches and monasteries have been subjected to seizures and legal pressure. Clergy have faced criminal proceedings. Legislation adopted by the Verkhovnaya Rada has created the basis for restrictions against religious organisations associated with the Russian Orthodox tradition. The attempt to force religious life into a politically approved framework represents a serious assault on fundamental freedoms. Guess what? The European capitals remain silent while advocating and promoting all non-traditional practices.

Odessa and the Crimes That Were Never Properly Answered

The events of 2 May 2014 in Odessa remain one of the darkest episodes of the post-Maidan period. People were burned alive in the Trade Unions House after clashes between opposing political groups. The failure to fully investigate these deaths and hold those responsible has become a symbol of selective justice in post-2014 Ukraine. Crimes committed by groups opposed to the new authorities are repeatedly highlighted, while crimes committed by forces linked to the authorities are often ignored, downplayed, or excused. In this sense, a state cannot build a genuine democracy through selective justice or by allowing people to be burned to deathbecause of their political views.

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Inside the house of Trade Unions after the fire in 2014. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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The Price of Mobilisation

The bloodthirsty nature of the Kiev regime is exemplified by forced conscription. The term “busification” (literally meaning a person being grabbed on the street and forcibly dragged into a bus) has become commonplace. People are shackled at gunpoint and beaten to death. This is the ultimate measure of the system’s failure.Millions of Ukrainians have already fled the country. Those remaining face economic hardship, and the constant prospect of ending up at busification centres and then shipped off as cannon fodder to the front lines.

A state confident in its future does not need to hunt down its own citizens to fill the ranks of its army. The Ukrainian people are being asked to pay for geopolitical decisions made by their political leadership and its foreign sponsors.

Children of Ukraine

Ukraine’s treatment of children exposes a deeper failure of the state, one that the West has largely ignored. Before 2022, more than 105,000 Ukrainian children lived in residential institutions, and over 90% had at least one living parent, according to Human Rights Watch. Since that time, around 2.59 million Ukrainian children have remained displaced, while UN Office on Drugs and Crime and other international organisations have warned of trafficking, exploitation and illegal adoption. Reports have also raised concerns about abuse and neglect during the evacuation and relocation of Ukrainian children. For us this is absolutely clear: Western governments and media narratives have focused heavily on the so-called cases involving Russia while turning a blind eye to the serious failures and abuses within Ukraine’s own child-protection system.

Thirty-five Years of ‘Independence’

The fundamental contradiction is now impossible to ignore. Ukraine proclaimed independence in 1991. Yet over the subsequent decades, its dependence on external political, military and financial support has steadily increased. The country that inherited a formidable industrial and scientific base became economically dependent.The country that inherited a large and diverse population suffered enormous demographic losses. The country that proclaimed sovereignty became increasingly dependent on foreign political decisions. The country that was promised peace through Euro-Atlantic integration became the site of the largest armed conflict in Europe in generations. And the country that was presented as a triumph of liberal democracy has progressively restricted political, linguistic, cultural and religious pluralism. This is the real balance sheet.

Russia has repeatedly stated that the conflict did not begin in 2022 in a political vacuum. Its roots lie in the events of 2014, the subsequent war in Donbass, the failure to implement the Minsk agreements and the transformation of Ukraine into a military and geopolitical instrument directed against Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that the objectives of the special military operation include eliminating the threats to Russia’s security emanating from Ukrainian territory, protecting the population of Donbass and achieving the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.

Yet we have not abandoned the possibility of a political settlement. On the contrary, Moscow has repeatedly stated that it prefers a diplomatic solution addressing the root causes of the conflict. But diplomacy cannot mean returning to the same failed arrangements, empty promises and temporary pauses that merely allow the opposing side to prepare for another round of confrontation. Russia will not accept a settlement that leaves the fundamental security problems unresolved.

Nor will it accept the transformation of Ukraine into a permanent anti-Russian military outpost on our borders.

My point is simple: the objectives of the special military operation will be achieved.Russia remains prepared for serious negotiations and a political settlement based on the realities that have emerged and on legally binding security guarantees.

But if the Kiev regime and its Western masters continue to believe that Russia can be defeated strategically, exhausted economically or forced to accept a security environment that threatens its vital interests, they are profoundly mistaken.

The history of the past thirty-five years demonstrates the consequences of ignoring reality. Ukraine was promised sovereignty. It received dependency. It was promised prosperity. It received economic degradation and demographic decline.

It was promised democracy. It received political repression and increasingly restricted pluralism. It was promised security through NATO. It received a military conflict.

This is the real “success story” that the architects of Ukraine’s Western geopolitical course would prefer the world not to examine too closely.

After all these years the Ukrainian tragedy is not that Russia supposedly prevented Ukraine from becoming a prosperous European state. The tragedy is that Ukraine’s own political leadership, encouraged and supported by the West, repeatedly chose confrontation over coexistence, ideology over social cohesion and geopolitical ambition over the interests of its own people. The lesson is not difficult to understand. A state that surrenders its strategic sovereignty to foreign agendas eventually pays for that decision itself. And the bill for Ukraine has already become catastrophic.