💔 Nearly a week has passed since the dreadful terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, but this tragedy rings fresh and continues to echo in the hearts of people from around the world.

The inflow of condolences coming from the leadership of the host countries, political parties, representatives of the diplomatic corps and public organisations continues unabated. Orthodox churches around the world are holding memorial services for the dead and prayers for the health of the injured. Russian compatriots as well as foreign citizens are carrying flowers and candles to makeshift memorials outside Russian diplomatic missions.

Thank you for your sympathy and support!

📹 The world mourns with Russia

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

💬 The German parliament followed in the wake of Canada and the US and endorsed legalisation of weed.

Now people in Germany will legally grow and store marijuana. Now it is allowed to carry up to 25 grammes of cannabis, store up to 50 grammes at home and grow up to three plants. Organisation of internet delivery of doses has already got underway with the connivance of the authorities.

And this is only the first part of the plan.

In future, enthusiasts will establish even special clubs for growing cannabis and sharing the harvest. It is allowed to smoke pot at a distance of a mere 100 metres from kindergartens and playgrounds.

And, of course, this liberalisation will also affect drug dealers that are behind the bars now. Previous convictions for growing or storage will be deleted from the Federal Central Register. The current investigations will be discontinued – there are almost 3,500 cases in Berlin alone. Tagesspiegel wrote recently that Berlin is flooded with drug crime – every other crime is related to drugs now.

The most surprising thing is that members of the German Government realise where they are taking their country. The opioid epidemic in the US and Canada did not go unnoticed in Germany. Drugs destroy a nation and deny the future to yourself and your children.

Here’s what German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said: “Cannabis is poison for the brain.” Yet, he “supports unequivocally” its legalisation. This is dubious, of course, but we will be pleased to wait and see.

I almost forgot to mention this. They selected a symbolic date for legalising cannabis – April 1, Fools’ Day.

🎙 MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s reply to a Rossiya Segodnya question regarding the fact that the Council of Europe has not responded to the March 22, 2024 terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall

❓Question: While casting itself as Europe’s oldest human rights organisation, the Council of Europe has yet to express its condolences to Russia regarding the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. How can you explain Strasbourg’s position on this matter?

💬 Maria Zakharova: The tragedy at the Crocus City Hall concert complex came as a shock for the entire world. State leaders and senior officials from international organisations, members of the diplomatic corps, as well as people from many countries firmly condemned this monstrous terrorist attack while sending Russia their condolences and support.

The openly cynical indifference displayed by senior officials from the Council of Europe (CoE) is striking. I am talking primarily about CoE Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić, who is from Croatia, as well as FM, Education and Sport of Liechtenstein Dominique Hasler, who currently presides the CoE Committee of Ministers. They have yet to express their official position regarding the tragic events <...>. On that day, they were in Kiev, and were probably too afraid to cause misgivings to the host.

👉 They wrote yet another shameful page into the annals of their organisation with its futile attempts to position itself as the conscience of Europe <...>.

To be fair, we must note that CoE Parliamentary Assembly President Theodoros Roussopoulos did post a message on X, (Twitter) to condemn the terrorist attack and express his “condolences to the victims and their families.”

❗️Strasbourg once again demonstrated how deeply degraded the Council of Europe has become today. <...>

At the same time, we must note that Russian diplomats in Strasbourg received so many personal messages of condolences showing that people in France and members of the diplomatic corps in Strasbourg do care about what happened.

Read in full

🎙 Briefing by MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (Moscow, March 27, 2024)

🔹 Crocus City Hall terrorist attack
🔹 Reproachful statements by Estonian foreign minister
🔹 Ukrainian crisis
🔹 Situation in Moldova
🔹 The UK Foreign Office replies to Russia’s request concerning the Skripals
🔹 Neo-colonial practices of the Western countries concerning Kyrgyzstan
🔹 Influx of Ukrainian food into Romania that fails to meet EU standards
🔹 210th anniversary of the Russian Army’s Foreign Campaign

📰 Read in full
📺 Watch in full

***

#CrocusCityHall

• Ignoring this “dancing on the graves” organised by Ukrainian propagandists, people from all continents are extending their heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured and strongly condemning this terrible attack against innocent civilians.

🕯 The Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel features images capturing impromptu memorials, videos, summary clips, and more.

• We thank those who have not remained indifferent.

#KievRegimeCrimes

❗️ In the past, the Ukrainian special services, such as the Security Service of Ukraine and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, have repeatedly admitted publicly to preparing and committing high-profile terrorist attacks against Russia and its citizens.

🎙 Excerpts from the interview with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for Izvestia MIC (March 28, 2024)

Read in full

#MiddleEastSettlement

• Creating the state of Palestine within the 1967 borders in line with the UNSC resolutions is the only way to bring a lasting solution to this issue.

• Most importantly, the bloodshed should be stopped. The adoption of this resolution (UNSC 2728) is a good development. The Americans let it pass realising that if they veto this resolution, calling for a ceasefire, they would lose face in their relations with the Global Majority.

#Moldova

• Moldovan President Sandu is openly seeking to break off relations with Russia. <...> Sandu has been turned into a instrument for developing the geopolitical space first by the EU and then NATO. <...> NATO has turned Ukraine into a tool of aggression. Now, they plan to do the same with Moldova.

#Armenia

• The Armenian leadership is deliberately aiming at breaking off relations with Russia. <...> The goal of those who are trying to tempt the Armenian leadership to the side of the West is simple – to disrupt stability in the South Caucasus and to turn it into a zone of Western domination.

#MultipolarWorld

• We have already dispelled all the far-fetched aspirations that Russia can be isolated by holding the Games of the Future and the World Youth Festival.

• We are paying more attention to our common Eurasian continent, where we have CSTO, EAEU, and SCO. These organisations are establishing partner relations with other organisations in that part of the world, like ASEAN, the Arab League, and the GCC. At the same time, we are developing ties with the African Union. <...> We are doing the same in Latin America. We have many partners there.

• Today, we see the regionalisation of global development. Every region and every country would like to be able to rely on its neighbours, to see what they can do together, among themselves, without depending on the logistics, financial and other instruments which the West still controls.

📹 #HapenningNow

💐 The members of the diplomatic corps in Moscow are arriving and gathering to take part in a solemn ceremony at the Crocus City Hall in memoriam of the victims of the heinous terrorist attack of March 22, 2024.

⚡️ The brutal terrorist attack committed in Krasnogorsk on March 22, which shocked the whole world, is far from the first act of terrorism targeting our country in recent time. The investigative actions carried out by the competent authorities in Russia indicate that the trails of all these crimes lead to Ukraine.

Other barbaric bomb attacks took the lives of journalists Darya Dugina and Maxim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky), seriously injured writer Yevgeny “Zakhar” Prilepin and killed his driver, Alexander Shubin; five people were killed by an explosion of the Crimean Bridge, and 42 were wounded in an explosion in a café in St Petersburg. The killing and mutilation of civilians, including children, was accompanied by raids by the terrorist organisation known as Russian Volunteer Corps.

❗️ In this regard, the Russian Foreign Ministry has put forward a demand for the Ukrainian authorities, under the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism to immediately arrest and extradite every person implicated in the above terrorist acts.

One of the demands is to arrest head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasily Malyuk, who cynically admitted on March 25 that Ukraine was behind the bombing of the Crimean Bridge in October 2022 and revealed details of the organisation of other attacks in the Russian Federation.

☝️ The fight against international terrorism is the responsibility of every state. The Russian side demands that the Kiev regime immediately cease any support for terrorist activities, extradite the perpetrators and compensate for the damage caused to the victims. Ukraine’s violation of its obligations under the antiterrorist conventions will entail international legal liability.

As Russia mourned, the tragedy at Crocus City Hall was cynically presented as theme for caricatures in UK papers, including those in The Guardian.

Whatever the spin, using a terrorist attack for political point-scoring is insensitive and immoral.

Or is it Ok just because it's about Russians?

Those claiming high moral ground should know better

⚔️ These day we commemorate the conclusion of the main leg of the Napoleonic Wars: it ended with the triumph of the Russian and allied forces who repelled Napoleon all the way back to France. On March 31, 1814, Russian army led by Emperor Alexander I triumphantly entered Paris.

Russia's goal was to expel the French troops from the countries they had invaded, deprive Napoleon of the opportunity to use their resources, complete the defeat of the aggressor on his own territory and ensure the establishment of a lasting peace in Europe.

The Russian forces seized the French capital, thus winning the final battle of its 1813-1814 foreign campaign. After the fall of Paris Napoleon abdicated the throne.

On May 30, 1814 the Treaty of Paris was signed between the members of the Anti-Napaleonic coalition and France. The Patriotic War was over: Germany was liberated and France was restored to its borders of 1792.

☝️ Russia made the main contribution to the defeat of Napoleon.

🎥 © Russian Military Historical Society

🇷🇺 The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation:

⚖️ A procedural examination has been initiated in response to an appeal from State Duma deputies concerning terrorist activities against Russia.

Following a review of the appeal submitted by State Duma deputies Andrey Krasov, Nikolai Kharitonov, Yana Lantratova, as well as public figures Alexander Dugin and Andrey Derkach, regarding the necessity of investigating into the organisation, financing, and execution of terrorist attacks orchestrated by the United States, Ukraine, and other Western nations against Russia, a procedural examination has been launched at the central office of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

🔍 During the examination, the investigation will meticulously analyse the provided information and make a procedural decision.

⚡️ Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on the occasion of the second anniversary of the staged Bucha massacre

💬 April 3 marks two years since the Zelensky regime and its Western handlers staged a bloody mass murder of the people in the town of Bucha, Kiev Region, allegedly by Russian servicemen, which turned out to be a botched job.

However, following the guidelines provided to them and failing to even make an attempt to double-check the facts and establish the actual state of affairs, Western politicians and the media scrambled to spread this falsehood.

This provocation was a put-up job and a staged provocation which was clear from the onset. The Russian side has refuted these allegations many times. We will now refute them once again. During the time the Russian Armed Forces were in Bucha until March 30, 2022, its residents moved freely around the town and used mobile phones and the internet.

❗️ There were no complaints about the Russian servicemen’s actions during that period, which was publicly confirmed by the mayor of the town, Anatoly Fedoruk, the day after our units left that town.

Moreover, during the time they were in Bucha, Russian servicemen brought 452 tonnes of humanitarian aid for the people in the Kiev Region’s towns and villages.

The first footage showing bodies strewn across the town appeared only after the Ukrainian armed forces and foreign journalists entered the town. Importantly, these were not criminalists or forensic experts, but biased media members, whose role was to tell the public a fabricated story and not to ask unnecessary questions.

🕯 The first findings of the forensic examination of the bodies found in Bucha, which were published in the British The Guardian on April 24, 2022, showed that most of the civilians died as a result of artillery shelling from fragments of anti-personnel 122-mm shells, which fit the D-30 howitzers in service of the Ukrainian forces, which confirms the fact that these people were killed not by bullets from small arms allegedly used by Russian servicemen, but as a result of the Ukrainian army’s artillery strikes targeting Bucha.

The propaganda-driven disinformation campaign in Bucha came as a response to our goodwill gesture to withdraw troops from the Kiev and Chernigov regions which was made in the wake of progress at the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul on March 28, 2022. Clearly, the goal of this campaign was to disrupt the dialogue between the parties and to launch a package of pre-arranged Western sanctions on Russia at the behest of London.

Subsequently, Kiev held multiple events inspired by the “Bucha massacre” in order to distract the international community’s attention from its own crimes and inconsistencies of the provocation it had staged, and to spread the fake theory about the town residents allegedly killed by the Russian military among the public in Western countries. This year, the Kiev officials’ attempts to make a big event out of this anniversary have an extra goal of preventing the international community from focusing on the challenging situation in Ukraine and on the line of contact.

Multiple requests that Russia sent to international organisations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, to establish the circumstances of the incident and to provide an accurate list of the persons whose bodies were found on the streets of Bucha, as well as other information, remain unanswered.

☝️ This shows that the organisers of this heinous act have things to hide.

Once again, we demand that international agencies stop covering up for the Kiev regime and ensure a thorough investigation that will finally reveal the names of the victims, the time and the cause of their death, the signs of the bodies having been moved from one place to another, and the individuals responsible for this terrifying crime by the Kiev authorities.

🇷🇺🇧🇾 President Vladimir Putin sent his greetings to President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on the Day of Unity of the Peoples of Russia and Belarus.

✉️ Despite challenging international circumstances, significant progress has been made recently in developing the multifaceted ties between Russia and Belarus, and in bolstering the institutions of the Union State.

Good results have stemmed from coordinated efforts in foreign policy, defence, and security. The effective execution of jointly agreed-upon Union programmes has facilitated the harmonisation of legislation in critical sectors between Russia and Belarus, laying the groundwork for unified macroeconomic and monetary policies, as well as the establishment of a common socioeconomic space.

At the January session of the Supreme State Council of the Union State, a new set of measures aimed at fostering integration processes was adopted. I firmly believe that the steadfast execution of these measures aligns with the core interests of both Russians and Belarusians and contributes to strengthening stability and security in the Eurasian space.

🇷🇺🇧🇾 On April 2, the peoples of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus celebrate their Day of Unity.

🗓 #OTD in 1996, they signed a treaty on the formation of the Community of Russia and Belarus, which served as the first step towards the creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

The Treaty on the Union of Russia and Belarus came into force a year later, and on December 8, 1999, the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State was signed.

🤝 Today, the Union State implements programmes in industry, energy and IT, to name a few. Trade between Russia and Belarus grows at record high rates every year, given the considerable degree of mutual complementarity of their economies.

💬 Addressing a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State on January 29, 2024, President Vladimir Putin said:

We have been working together to build the Union State for almost 25 years. Along this path, we have managed to achieve a great deal. Thanks to the successful implementation of 28 sectoral Union programmes, Russian and Belarusian legislation was harmonised, the legal and organisational foundations for a common economic space formed, and conditions created for the implementation of a unified macroeconomic and monetary policy, and for joint work to minimise damage from illegal Western restrictions.

☝️ The Unity Day of the Peoples of Russia and Belarus confirms the cohesion of the two fraternal peoples and their striving to continue strengthening their interaction based on the centuries-old traditions of friendship and close cultural and spiritual ties.

📃 On the occasion of the Day of Unity of the Peoples of Russia and Belarus President Vladimir Putin sent his greetings to President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

🎊 We congratulate our Belarusian friends on a holiday that is a symbol of unbreakable ties of brotherly friendship between our countries and peoples!

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Western “democracy” in nutshell. Latest news

Three weeks ago, Sweden finally joined NATO. We know that the Swedes themselves were never asked about it, but a few days ago, Göteborgs-Posten, a Swedish newspaper, published an opinion poll on what the Swedish people think about their country’s membership in the alliance. The poll involved over a thousand respondents aged over 18.

These numbers are highly indicative of the general sentiment.

Participants were asked whether or not they approved of the potential deployment of Swedish soldiers to zones of hostilities or NATO exercises. Three out of five respondents gave a negative response.

The decision of the Ulf Kristersson Cabinet to join NATO has polarised the Swedish public, with half of the population vehemently opposing their county’s membership in the North Atlantic alliance.

The Swedes are still coming to terms with the gravity of the situation. “It looks like Sweden waged a war against the United States and suffered a crushing defeat,” says a Swedish expert, Jan Guillou, in his article published by Aftonbladet, a leading national political newspaper. He is echoed by a columnist from the Dagens Arena, former Ambassador to Russia Sven Hirdman: “Now Sweden is a US vassal.” The Swedish people ask direct questions: “Does the increased NATO and US military presence in Sweden mean that our country is now entangled in NATO’s military controversy with Russia?”

They are starting to suspect something.

NATO membership is for Sweden a risky and costly change of priorities. The people of Sweden certainly do not need it. That’s why the government decided not to hold a referendum on the matter.

The true reason is that, apart from the Washington-oriented provisional government in Stockholm, nobody actually wanted to stumble into NATO.

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spox Maria Zakharova

💬 President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach made a telltale admission to pranksters.

This is what he said:

“Now those who support [the Russian Government] cannot take part [in the Olympic Games]. We have a special review panel at the level of the IOC which is working with an independent company, and they are monitoring the internet, media and public declarations. So, if an athlete said something somewhere, he won’t be able to take part in the Games. We also offered the Ukrainian side, and not only offered but asked them to provide us with their knowledge about behaviour of such athletes or officials. And they cannot take part [in the Games].”

Thomas Bach entered into a political, administrative and apparently criminal conspiracy with one particular side to remove strong sports rivals at international competitions.

His relations with the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and its officials and his admission about the request to watch Russian athletes must be subjected to thorough investigation.

Such behind-the-scenes agreements based on the good old German tradition of snitching are giving a new look at the scandal fuelled by the same Germans – German “investigators” of the doping scandal which unfairly kicked many Russian athletes off the sports track.

☝️ I hope international sports journalists will not ignore this egregious situation. It seems to me it is a Watergate for the IOC as a whole and personally for Bach.