Remarks by Deputy Head of the Russian delegation to Vienna talks about military security and arms control Oleg Bushuyev at the 1122nd plenary session of the OSCE Forum for Security Cooperation, November 19, 2025
19 November 2025 18:10
1937-19-11-2025
Agenda item: General statements
Topic: On the special military operation to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine
Madam Chair,
Russia's special military operation is ongoing. Our units continue pushing the enemy back along the entire line of contact. Over the past week, the town of Dvurechanskoye, Kharkov Region; the village of Platonovka, DPR; and the village of Gai, Dnepropetrovsk Region, were brought under our control.
The Ukrainian armed forces are suffering heavy and unjustified losses as they vainly attempt to break through the newly formed encirclement. Due to personnel shortages in certain areas, Ukrainian assault units are being reinforced with female service members and thrown into meat wave assaults.
With the complicity of Western handlers, the Kiev regime continues to commit war crimes. Over the past week, 71 civilians came under Ukrainian shelling; 58 of them were wounded and 13, including one minor, killed. Over the past seven days, the Ukrainian armed formations fired no fewer than 3,848 munitions, including cluster warheads, mines, and grenades at civilian targets in Russia. The enemy widely used attack UAVs and small arms.
The largest number of injuries among the civilians was seen in the Belgorod, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions where 66 civilians, or almost 91 percent of the total number of wounded civilians, were injured in the UAV attacks. Clearly, drone operators knew exactly the kind of targets they were attacking.
Civilian energy facilities have been deliberately attacked with long-range missiles, among other munitions. The Bryansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions, as well as the LPR, saw widespread power outages.
The Kiev regime continued its irresponsible provocations against nuclear facilities. At least eight drones were sent towards the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant. All of them have been neutralised. However, the debris damaged the main electricity distribution plant.
The geography of long-range strikes significantly expanded. Fixed-wing UAVs were used to carry out raids against civilian facilities deep inside Russia in the Volgograd, Kaluga, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Smolensk, Orenburg, and Oryol regions, as well as in the Republic of Tatarstan. Civilian casualties were reported in Volgograd and Saratov.
The Belgorod region was attacked by at least 100 drones per day during the period under review. Over the week, 21 civilians were injured in UAV attacks; three of them died.
The enemy deliberately and cynically used drone strikes to attack first responders. In Gorlovka, DPR, four Emergencies Ministry employees were wounded in the line of duty.
In the Zaporozhye Region, Ukrainian terrorists attacked medical workers twice in one day. A drone strike targeted an ambulance in Vasilyevka and the central district hospital in Kamenka-Dneprovskaya. The fatalities include a 65-year-old woman in the village of Vodyanoye and a man in the village of Romanovskoye.
In the Kherson Region, civilian vehicles, including a lorry operated by humanitarian aid headquarters, and several blocks of flats have been damaged in a shelling attack. UAV attacks against civilians have intensified. Last week, nine civilians were injured in such attacks; one of them died.
Another atrocity was committed by Ukrainian militants in the DPR. A priest, his wife, and a family of parishioners with an eight-year-old child, who tried to evacuate to Russia, were killed by drone and mortar fire outside Konstantinovka. The wounded were mercilessly put to death. Seven civilians, including a child, were killed. The UAV operators prevented local residents from retrieving the bodies and opened fire on anyone attempting to approach the site of the tragedy.
The Zelensky regime's crimes against civilians have become systematic. It is outrageous to see them, with the assistance of Western media, shift the blame for their atrocities on Russian servicemen. The Western media outlets are being effectively used as tools operated by Ukrainian information and psychological operations. This happened during the horrendous incident we mentioned at the previous meeting. The video put together by Channel One debunks the falsehood which was cooked up by Kiev and its handlers and is available for viewing. We cannot play it now for it includes footage of the Ukrainian armed forces' inconceivable cruelty towards civilians. Western journalism is undergoing rapid degradation which can be seen from a recent scandal involving the BBC, which fabricated remarks by US President Donald Trump. This shows that sources that used to enjoy high standing are now turning into factories of lies and disinformation, which are then replicated by NATO and the EU on international platforms.
In response to these terrorist attacks, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out numerous strikes with long-range precision weapons launched from air, land, and sea, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, as well as strike UAVs, targeting Ukraine's military-industrial facilities and energy sites that support their functioning; transport infrastructure used in the interests of the Ukrainian Armed Forces; military airfields; sites for storing and preparing attack drones for launch; and temporary deployment points of Ukrainian armed formations and foreign mercenaries.
I emphasise that the Russian Armed Forces carry out strikes exclusively on military targets and for military purposes to disrupt Ukrainian logistics. Civilians and civilian facilities are not targeted. Russian military strictly adhere to the international humanitarian law.
Madam Chair,
The sponsors of the Kiev regime, driven by self-serving considerations, deliberately turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Instead, they persist in prioritising so-called "security guarantees" for Ukraine, flooding the country with weapons and allocating vast sums to the Kiev clique.
The illicit trade in Western arms and military equipment has long assumed a large-scale character in Ukraine and is entirely controlled by the ruling elite and international organised criminal groups operating under the patronage of state officials, AFU command, and the leadership of national intelligence agencies.
According to data from the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the volume of illegal weapons in the possession of European organised crime groups increased by 40 percent in 2024-2025. Notably, these are primarily weapons that Ukraine previously received from NATO member states as part of military-technical assistance programmes. There has been a marked rise in incidents involving the use of explosive devices of Ukrainian origin by criminals.
In January-April alone, Ukraine's State Border Guard Service intercepted over 2,000 units of weaponry - predominantly small arms and anti-tank missile systems - as well as 580,000 rounds of ammunition and approximately 3 tonnes of explosives during attempts to smuggle them into EU countries. As you are aware, this represents only a fraction of the total; the remainder has already crossed the border.
For instance, German law enforcement officers conducted searches between March 17-21 as part of an investigation into two individuals suspected of smuggling weapons from Ukraine. Investigative findings indicate that various types of armaments were transported into European countries under the guise of humanitarian aid for Ukrainian citizens residing in the EU.
This grim litany of statistics could be extended indefinitely.
It is noteworthy that the report by the US Department of Defence's Inspector General to Congress for the first half of the current fiscal year, detailing oversight findings, underscores that Pentagon officials are incapable of ensuring transparency or accountability in the process of transferring American arms and military equipment to the AFU.
The recent corruption scandal that erupted in Ukraine hardly suggests that Zelensky's patrons are intent on restoring order in the country. It is difficult to believe that the sponsors of the Kiev regime were unaware of the scale of embezzlement at the highest echelons of power. They knew - yet chose to remain silent. A protracted conflict fought by proxy - that is the primary objective pursued by the West, even amid Ukraine's pervasive system of kickbacks. Zelensky and his associates have always understood this and exploited it deftly. For them, the lives of ordinary Ukrainians are trivial, and war is merely a means to line their own pockets.
Madam Chair,
At the previous meeting, our opponents engaged in discussions regarding the purportedly dire state of the Russian economy in relation to the special military operation, even citing some questionable figures. We comprehend their desire to present wishful thinking as reality. Meanwhile, objective unfavourable evaluations of the current state of the EU economy caused by the unprecedented rise in the bloc's military expenditures were conveniently overlooked.
Judge for yourselves: according to data from the European Defence Agency, in 2024, the combined defence spending of EU member states increased by 19 percent compared to 2023, amounting to 343 billion euros. In 2025, this figure is expected to reach 381 billion euros. Meanwhile, the European economy is experiencing prolonged stagnation (EU GDP growth was just 0.5 percent in 2023 and 1.0 percent in 2024), which prevents EU governments from increasing national budget revenues. In this situation, the rapid escalation of military spending is only possible by slashing other budget lines, primarily social ones. Just consider - every euro spent on procuring shells, missiles, and drones is a euro taken away from education, healthcare, and pension systems.
Moreover, EU member states have increased public borrowing to finance rearmament programmes. Do you realise that these enormous expenditures are being offloaded onto future generations, a fact European politicians conveniently ignore?
The EU's initiatives to provide financial assistance to the Kiev regime are, in fact, inflating both the bloc's own debt (which stood at approximately 680 billion euros as of September) and that of individual member states. According to Eurostat, the aggregate public debt of EU countries rose to a staggering 81.9 percent of the bloc's GDP by the end of the second quarter. The International Monetary Fund predicts that, should the existing economic and fiscal policies persist, this figure could soar to 130 percent by 2026. It is obvious that Ukraine will never be able to repay these funds to the bloc.
The primary beneficiaries of Europe's militarisation are the leading defence conglomerates of EU countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which are closely tied to the political establishment. They profit handsomely from lucrative government contracts, securing record profits while other sectors of the economy suffer from a severe lack of investment.
Another adverse effect of the forced development of the military industry is the exacerbation of territorial imbalances and social inequality within the EU. The bulk of financial flows linked to defence contracts are directed to a limited number of military industry clusters in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, while the "lagging" regions endure even greater underfunding. In this way, years of efforts to strengthen the European Union are being undermined.
Let me reiterate: it is future generations of Europeans who will have to foot the bill. The debt burden imposed on them will be all the heavier given the deeply negative demographic trends in the EU (an ageing population, a shrinking workforce, and low birth rates).
Madam Chair,
The escalation of the arms race, the promotion of war hysteria, and confrontational logic do not strengthen but rather undermine the security of EU countries, thereby increasing the risks of their entanglement in a full-scale conflict.
Despite this, Brussels continues to actively arm the Kiev regime, which is waging war against its own people and resorting to all manner of provocations.
Recently, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation thwarted an operation by Ukrainian intelligence services and their British handlers to hijack a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet equipped with the Kinzhal hypersonic missile and smuggle it abroad. To this end, Ukrainian military intelligence officers attempted to recruit Russian pilots, offering them a payment of $3 million. The plan was to fly the hijacked MiG-31 to the vicinity of the NATO airbase in Constanta, Romania, where it could have been shot down by enemy air defence systems. I need not elaborate on the potential consequences had this provocation succeeded.
Let me reiterate this warning: any attempts to carry out such schemes will have the gravest consequences. We urge the West to refrain from supporting or instigating such reckless ventures.
The objectives set at the outset of the special military operation will be achieved in any case. We will not tolerate the continued existence of threats along our borders. That said, we remain convinced that resolving security issues through dialogue and diplomacy within the OSCE framework constitutes the most acceptable option for all.
Thank you for your attention.
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