MOSCOW, July 21. /TASS/. Russia expects UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to respond to the Russia-UN memorandum, which is valid for three years and which requires a prior written notice to withdraw from it, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Friday.
"In the coming period, we are looking forward to the UN Secretary-General’s response about his plans for the Russia-UN memorandum, which, as you know, is valid for three years and requires a (three-month) prior written notice to quit it. This will reveal the UN officials’ true colors in ensuring global food security and addressing hunger, under the pretexts of which the UN Secretariat had in fact been quite busy until recently, mostly providing services for Ukrainian commercial grain exports to ‘well-fed’ countries," she said.
Zakharova dubbed Guterres’ remarks about Russian strikes on Odessa as “a vivid illustration of hypocrisy.”
“With that said, we are focusing attention on the systematic lack of any reaction, if not the methodical silencing by the UN leadership of Kiev’s blatant terrorist attacks and assaults,” she said, citing examples of such incidents, namely the sabotage on the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline on June 5 and the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge early on Monday morning.
“In general, it is not the first time that the UN leadership has for political reasons hushed up unflattering things, and not only in the context of Ukraine. We have not noticed any public response from the UN Secretariat to (or let alone condemnation) Israel’s regular, indiscriminate air strikes on Syria, including on the international airports in Damascus and Aleppo. The Syrians’ pleas to the UN Secretary-General have been left without answers for years,” she concluded.