✉️ Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey #Lavrov has sent a congratulatory message to Director of Russia's MFA Press and Information Department Maria #Zakharova on her anniversary (December 24, 2025)

✍️ Dear Maria Vladimirovna,

I extend to you my heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of your jubilee.

An energetic and goal-oriented diplomat representing a new generation, you have devoted your entire life to serving Russia. Your vivid and distinctive professional style, exceptional dedication to work, and unconventional approach to addressing the tasks at hand have enabled you to achieve truly impressive results.

Your invaluable contribution to promoting Russia’s foreign policy in the information sphere, to communicating its principles and priorities to broad audiences in Russia and worldwide, as well as to exposing Western propaganda, commands the deepest respect. It is only natural that you have earned – and I do not hesitate to say this – nationwide affection and the respect of millions of Russians and friends of our country abroad.

I greatly value our many years of close cooperation. I highly appreciate your reliability and your sincere readiness to work for the benefit of the country, regardless of personal time and other circumstances.

I wish you sound health, well-being, and new major successes in all your endeavours.

SERGEY LAVROV

🇷🇺 Key foreign policy outcomes of 2025

#Outcomes2025

In 2025, Russia made a significant contribution to strengthening the foundations of a just multipolar world order based on international law and cooperation between countries. Decisive steps were taken to protect the country’s vital national interests on the external front, with a focus on the CIS countries and Eurasia.

This year marked the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory. Alongside its like-minded international partners, Russia reaffirmed its commitment to inviolability of the post-war world order and its foundation in the form of the full body of principles enshrined in the UN Charter understood as an indivisible and interdependent whole.

• In the Commonwealth of Independent States, 2025 was declared the Year of Peace and Unity in the Fight against Nazism.

• A solemn General Assembly session to commemorate WWII victims was held at Russia’s initiative at the New York UN headquarters in May. An annual resolution on combatting glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism co-sponsored by 44 countries was adopted in December.

• Comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China received a strong boost thanks to successful leader diplomacy by President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping and reciprocal visits to Moscow in May and to Beijing in September.

• After the new US administration came to the White House in January, political dialogue with Washington at the top levels was restored. During the Russia-US summit in Anchorage on August 15, understandings were reached that could form the basis for resolving the Ukraine conflict by addressing its underlying causes, including military threats to Russia created by NATO expansion and policies undermining the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking populations.

• Relations with North Korea took on a new dimension, with the DPRK providing allied assistance in liberating the Kursk Region from Ukrainian militants and contributing significantly to creating proper conditions for the region’s return to peaceful life, in accordance with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.

• A new stage in relations with Iran was marked by the signing in January and entry into force in October of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.

• Tangible results were achieved in supporting integration processes in Eurasia.

• Within the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), priority tasks were identified for implementing the collective security strategy, steps were taken to strengthen the combat readiness of collective forces, and an anti-narcotics strategy through 2030 was approved.

• On December 14, at the initiative of Russia and other member states of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the International Day for the Elimination of Colonialism in all its forms, and on December 4, the International Day for Combatting Unilateral Coercive Measures.

• Measures taken to protect Orthodox Christianity and other Russian religions and denominations created favourable conditions for the resettlement of foreign nationals, including from countries with unfriendly governments, to our country under the framework of the Presidential Executive Order On Providing Humanitarian Support to Individuals Sharing Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values.

• Efforts to combat the spread of untruthful information about Russia in foreign printed and social media intensified, including through cooperation with our international partners within the International Fact-Checking Network.

❗️ The firm defence of national interests in relations with the countries whose governments undertake hostile anti-Russian actions forced them to recognise the impossibility of inflicting on Russia a “strategic defeat on the battlefield” and led them to adopt a concept of an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Ukrainian theatre of operations.

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🎙 Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's answer to a media question regarding the practice of applying unilateral coercive measures (December 26, 2025)

❓ Question: How would you comment on the differences in approaches between the “collective West” and the Global Majority to the use of unilateral coercive measures in contemporary international relations?

💬 Maria Zakharova: This practice runs counter to the UN Charter, which vests the exclusive prerogative to impose measures of this nature in the UN Security Council, and only in cases involving threats to peace and security.

In this context, the use of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) constitutes an encroachment on the unique powers of the UN Security Council. It is well known that the “collective West” routinely resorts to this practice, most often driven by geopolitical considerations.

UCMs represent a serious obstacle to the formation of a just and equitable polycentric world order.

They serve as one of the main instruments of the neocolonial policy of the “collective West”, the goal of which is evident – to preserve its slipping dominance, deprive the countries of the Global Majority of their right to an independent political choice, and slow down their economic, technological and industrial development.

Attempts by the initiators of UCMs to portray them as a “peaceful means of dispute settlement” do not withstand criticism. It is well known that, by hindering the full-fledged socio-economic development of the countries of the Global South and East, unilateral coercive measures undermine efforts to resolve crisis situations. Their indiscriminate nature violates fundamental human rights and freedoms, first and foremost affecting the most vulnerable segments of the population – a fact repeatedly condemned in resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.

At the forefront of efforts to counter UCMs within the United Nations stands the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter, which includes the Russian Fededation.

Among the Group’s unquestionable achievements in this area is the adoption, at its initiative, of an entire package of UN General Assembly documents, including Resolution 78/329, which shifted the General Assembly debates on unilateral coercive measures from a three-year to a two-year cycle, as well as Resolution 79/293, adopted in June this year, which proclaimed December 4 as the International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures.

It is important that the Group’s steps to counter this unlawful practice are part of a broader anti-neocolonial front. It was at the Group’s initiative that the UN General Assembly adopted the principled Resolutions 79/115, “Eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations”, and 80/106, which proclaimed December 14 as the International Day against Colonialism in all its forms and manifestations.

❗️ We are confident that in a truly just multipolar architecture of international relations – which we all aspire to build – there is no place for coercion or neocolonial hegemony. Together with our partners – responsible members of the Global Majority – we will continue the fight against all remnants of the shameful colonial era.

#StopColonialism