UNITED NATIONS, September 19. /TASS/. The Western-led crusade to isolate Russia at various venues, including at the UN, is failing, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya told TASS on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week which will kick off on September 20.
"The High-Level Week is the traditional time for a large number of meetings between the heads of delegations of member states which congregate in one location - the UN’s Headquarters. Indeed, the collective West continues its attempts at what they call the ‘isolation’ of Russia which, as practice shows, has failed to work," he noted.
Russia’s former partners "cannot come to terms with the fact that the world does not revolve around them, that it is not limited by 50-70 Western states and their satellites," the diplomat added.
"By arm-twisting and open blackmail, and even through using threats to stop providing humanitarian and financial aid to various developing countries" Western countries are "attempting to force the representatives of the leadership of independent states to refuse to meet with Russian officials," the envoy emphasized.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. Following this, the US and its allies announced sweeping sanctions against Russia and stepped up arms deliveries to Kiev. A number of Western politicians admitted that this was essentially an economic war against Russia.