MOSCOW, January 27. /TASS/. Moscow still thinks staying in UNESCO is the right move, despite the organization's anti-Russian slant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"I don’t think we should withdraw from UNESCO. We should fight against its secretariat’s absolutely biased and unacceptable attitudes from inside," he said in an interview with the Culture television channels for the documentary UNESCO. 70 Years in Russia.
"And we are doing this - submitting formal inquiries. The secretariat is obligated to hear the inquiries of member states. When they essentially brush off our requests, we say so publicly," he said.
According to the top Russian diplomat, the most deplorable thing about UNESCO's leadership is that "they have an absolutely biased position on the Ukrainian crisis, thus flagrantly violating the UNESCO Charter, which provides for equal rights concerning the access to education for all." "The UN Charter, which is binding on all specialized institutions, with UNESCO being one of them, puts it even more simply - everyone must respect human rights, regardless of race, gender, language, or religion. The Russian language and the canonical Orthodox Church are outlawed in Ukraine. That didn't happen overnight," Lavrov pointed out.
He recalled that immediately after the 2014 state coup in Ukraine, those who seized power announced their plans to revoke the Russian language’s status. "Long before the special military operation, they began to pass laws first limiting the rights of the languages of all national minorities in secondary school. Then, after passing a special order making an exemption for EU languages, they focused on discriminating solely against Russian," the top Russian diplomat noted. "After secondary school, they banned Russian in primary school (and at universities too). Then, other laws, normative acts in Kiev and other cities followed. In the long run, all Russian news outlets were ousted from the media market. Then, they closed three major Russian-language broadcasters owned by Ukrainian nationals. Just listen to what Vladimir Zelensky and his team (government officials) are saying about the Russian language."
However, UNESCO, which is obligated to ensure equal opportunity in the sphere of education, "has not responded to any of the steps geared to eradicate the Russian language in schools," he stressed. "This is deplorable. But we continue persistently defending our principles and the ones underlying the activities of international organizations."
"UNESCO is about eternal values and human progress. It would be a mistake to cede this organization to the usurpers who have privatized its secretariat and are now seeking to rule the entire organization their own way. We don't give up so easily," the top Russian diplomat added.