⚡️ Statement by Head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky following the third round of Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul (July 23, 2025)

Key talking points:

• All agreements on humanitarian tracks discussed previously have been fulfilled. The exchange of the last groups of prisoners of war — about 250 individuals from each side — is nearing completion at the Ukraine-Belarus border. A second, unprecedentedly large exchange involving approximately 1'200 people from each side has been completed. An agreement has been reached to conduct another exchange of no less than 1'200 POWs from each side in the near future. Ongoing indefinite humanitarian exchanges of the severely wounded and sick along the line of contact will continue.

• Russia proposed the formation of three working groups to operate online: on political issues, humanitarian issues, and military issues. The Ukrainian Side agreed to consider this proposal.

• The Russian Side has once again proposed that Ukraine consider the possibility of declaring short-term ceasefires (24–48 hours) along the line of contact to retrieve the wounded and the bodies of fallen soldiers.

• Russia has returned more than 7'000 bodies [of AFU soldiers] to Ukraine and has received a small number of its own in return. An offer was made to hand over an additional 3'000 bodies of Ukrainian servicemen.

• The issue of returning civilians displaced by hostilities was discussed. Not all residents of the Kursk region who were "evacuated" by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to Ukrainian territory have been returned home. There are about 30 such individuals, and they are still being held by Ukraine.

• There was extensive discussion on the positions outlined by both parties in the memoranda exchanged last time. The positions remain quite far apart. It was agreed to maintain contact.

• The list of 339 names of Ukrainian children has been fully reviewed. Some children have been returned to Ukraine. Work is ongoing regarding the others. If legal guardians, close relatives, or official representatives are found, the children will be returned home immediately. For us, children are sacred. At present, they are under state care, safe and well provided for in appropriate child welfare institutions.

***

❓ Question: Was the possibility of a summit-level meeting discussed?

💬 Vladimir Medinsky: For such a meeting to take place, the terms of the agreement must first be thoroughly prepared. A summit should be held to finalize and sign off on agreements. Meeting just to rehash everything again makes no sense.

15 июня 2025 года стартовал ежегодный Международный экологический конкурс "ЭкоМир", проводимый Российской Академией естественных наук с 2003 года.

Цель конкурса - поощрить деятельность, направленную на решение экологических проблем, и оценить выдающиеся достижения в области охраны окружающей среды.

Отбор участников конкурса осуществляется на основе поданных заявок и документов, подтверждающих реализацию проектов, программ и акций.

Срок подачи заявок на конкурс до 1 декабря 2025 года.

Ознакомиться с документами конкурса и подать заявку.

On June 15, 2025, the annual International Ecological Contest "EcoMir" has been launched. The Russian Academy of Natural Sciences holds the competition since 2003.

The goal of the competition is to encourage the activities to solve environmental problems and to take stock of outstanding achievements in the field of environmental protection.

An application and documents confirming the implementation of ecological projects, programs and activities are necessary to secure the participation in the "EcoMir" contest.

The deadline for submitting applications is December 1, 2025.

Learn more about the contest and apply.

🎙 Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova:

In response to President Vladimir Putin’s instruction, we are working to reunite children with their families in Russia, Ukraine, or other countries. The first reunions took place in 2022.

Since then, we have received a steady stream of requests and lists – in total, processing records for over 1,100 children. After verifying the details, only a small portion of cases required our direct assistance with reunification. Some families reunited or found each other independently; others needed no intervention because the children were already living with relatives.

❗️ To date, since the beginning of the special military operation, our efforts have helped reunite 25 children from 17 families with relatives in Russia, while 112 children from 88 families have been reunited with relatives in Ukraine and third countries.

Each story is unique. In most cases, children were living with one parent or relatives but wished to join the other parent. There were also instances where children had been placed in institutions, but their mother, father, or other close relatives sought to bring them home. We facilitated these reunions.

We began working on the list received during the Istanbul talks as soon as it was available. Most individuals on the list are adults or children already living with their parents or close relatives in Russia. For some children, Russian law enforcement has no record of them being on Russian territory.

Some children were reunited with relatives through our assistance even before we received the list – some as recently as this summer. Our work continues.

🤝 Over the past years, we have developed a clear-cut reunification process – working alongside international partners, including the State of Qatar, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Ukrainian side. Typically, family reunification requires extensive preparation and often multiple approvals. Where needed, we assist families in gathering the necessary documents and arranging logistics. We also meet arriving parents and accompanying persons, given the vast geographic scope involved.

In accordance with the Presidential instructions, children may only reunite with families upon receiving an application from a parent or other close relative with the appropriate legal capacity.

During the talks, the Ukrainian side was also provided with a list of 20 children living in Ukraine and the European Union whose relatives in Russia are awaiting reunification. We hope this step will bring them closer to being reunited. Unfortunately, in some cases, we have seen no progress – even when the request came directly from parents.

Уважаемые соотечественники,

28 июля полиция Бангладеш предупредила о возможном ухудшении положения в области правопорядка по всей стране в связи с возможными политическими акциями, приуроченными к годовщине отставки правительства Ш.Хасины и прихода к власти временной администрации во главе с М.Юнусом.

На этом фоне в период с 29 июля по 8 августа рекомендуем соблюдать повышенные меры предосторожности, а именно:

- следить за новостями;
- заблаговременно проверять транспортную обстановку при планировании поездок;
- избегать мест проведения демонстраций, особенно университетских кампусов и офисов политических партий.

Напоминаем номер дежурного телефона Посольства: +8801713063027.

On July 29, we celebrate Global Tiger Day. It was established in 2010 during the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia, which brought together thirteen tiger-range countries committed to address the alarming decline in wild tiger populations.

The primary goal of this day is to raise awareness about tiger conservation, promote protection of tiger habitats, and support global efforts to curb poaching and illegal trade that threaten tiger survival.

🇷🇺 🇧🇩 Rare tiger species live in both Russia and Bangladesh. The countries contribute significantly to the global efforts to protect tigers through anti-poaching measures, community engagement, and long-term conservation strategies. In Russia in a decade the number of Amur tigers has increased from 400 to around 750. In Bangladesh the population is also on the rise, with now at least 125 Bengal tigers living in Sundarban.

📷 RIA NOVOSTI

29 июля отмечается Международный день тигра. Он был учрежден в 2010 году в Санкт-Петербурге в ходе Международного форума по проблемам, связанным с сохранением тигров на Земле. На саммите собрались представители 13 стран, где обитают тигры, чтобы объединить усилия в борьбе с тревожной тенденцией — сокращением популяции этого красивейшего зверя.

Основные цели Дня тигра — содействовать защите мест обитания тигра и поддержать глобальные усилия по борьбе с браконьерством и незаконной торговлей, которые ставят под угрозу существование этих животных.

🇷🇺 🇧🇩 Редкие виды тигров обитают как в России, так и в Бангладеш. Обе страны вносят большой вклад в глобальные усилия по защите тигров: борются с браконьерством и реализуют долгосрочные стратегии в сфере охраны природы. В России за одно десятилетие численность амурских тигров увеличилась с 400 до 750 особей. В Бангладеш популяция также растет: в настоящее время в Сундарбане обитает не менее 125 бенгальских тигров.

📷 РИА НОВОСТИ

📰 Article by Russia' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ‘The Helsinki Act’s 50th anniversary: Expectations, reality, and future’

Published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on August 1, 2025

✍️ Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and WWII in 2025 serves as an occasion for us to recall and reaffirm the importance of peace which came at such a high cost for our forefathers. We must also be mindful of how fragile this peace architecture is. In fact, its integrity hinges upon the ability of countries and their people to engage in coordinated collective action.

Back in 1945, the year of Victory, major powers realised the need to overcome their differences for the sake of the humankind as a whole. This paved the way for establishing the United Nations as one of the key derivatives of this vision. In fact, the purposes and principles set out in the UN Charter remain relevant to this day and are in step with the reality of an emerging multipolar world order.

But there is another international event which happened precisely 50 years ago and is worth commemorating. This is when the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed. It became a landmark event in consolidating the post-war architecture based on the framework resulting from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

☝️ Those camping on unfriendly positions towards Russia seek to diminish and sweep under the carpet the fact that our country, which was the USSR at that time, played a leading role in the Helsinki process, while also distorting the objectives the Soviet leaders were pursuing. We are facing groundless and unappealing accusations of undermining the European security framework, and politicians in the EU and NATO have made no secret of their intention to re-write the outcomes of WWII and do not shy away from concocting barbaric fakes for that purpose.

Key points:

• Western countries have breached all the OSCE agreements on arms control and confidence-building measures. Russia has appealed to the conscience of Western elites more than once, inviting them to coordinate reliable security guarantees based on fundamental commitment adopted within the OSCE.

• Europe is deeply immersed in Russophobia, and its militarisation is essentially becoming uncontrollable. There are more than enough facts of this. <...> This brings historical events to mind: with their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich.

• In recent years, the West has openly shown absolute contempt for the OSCE’s principles & embarked on the path of suppressing rivals through economic pressure, including unlawful unilateral measures against Russia, Belarus and any other country that strives to defend its legitimate national interests. The OSCE marked a decisive end to practical cooperation between the East and the West.

• The scale of accumulated OSCE problems is immense. Burdened by them, the Organisation has been side-lined in international affairs. The Vienna platform no longer offers space for cooperation or security. The architects of the Helsinki Final Act did not envisage such a future for the pan-European process. It is high time to consider whether such an Organisation has any reason to persist.

• Today, the ideas of sovereign equality of states and their mutually respectful dialogue – strangled in the OSCE – are being realised through multilateral cooperation projects within the CSTO, the CIS, #SCO, and other regional frameworks across Eurasia.

• As a strategic objective, Russia envisions forming a flexible and resilient architecture of equal & indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia, capable of addressing contemporary challenges.

• There will be no future for the OSCE if NATO and EU countries do away with the consensus rule and continue using this platform with its headquarters in Vienna as their private mouthpiece for spreading shameless propaganda campaigns to demonise Russia & any other parties who break ranks, while backing their underlings in Kiev.

Read in full

🎙 Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s response to a media question regarding the tightening of tariffs by the US Administration towards the countries of the Global South (August 4, 2025)

❓ Question: How does Russia view Washington’s policy of increasing tariff barriers against our key foreign policy partners in the Global South?

💬 Maria Zakharova: Sanctions and restrictions have unfortunately become a defining feature of the current historical period, impacting countries across the globe. Unable to accept the erosion of its dominance in an emerging multipolar international order, Washington continues to pursue a neocolonial agenda, employing politically motivated economic pressure against those who choose an independent course on the international stage.

This approach runs counter to the very principles of free trade once championed by Western nations. Instead, we now witness politically driven protectionism and the arbitrary imposition of tariff barriers. Brazil, our strategic partner in Latin America and the Caribbean, is one of the main victims of this policy.

☝️ Such actions by the United States represent a direct infringement on the sovereignty of other nations and an attempt to interfere in their internal affairs. Beyond these concerns, this policy risks slowing global economic growth, disrupting supply chains, and deepening the fragmentation of the international economic system.

Nonetheless, we firmly believe that no tariff wars or sanctions can halt the natural course of history. We are supported by a vast number of partners, like-minded states, and allies, particularly among the countries of the Global South and, above all, within #BRICS, who share this perspective.

❗️ We stand ready to deepen cooperation with them to resist unlawful unilateral sanctions and to help shape a genuinely multipolar, just, and equitable international order.