Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday, Sikorski said that he was "amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador."
Sikorski stated, as cited by the Polish foreign ministry: "Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.
"He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.
Russia in 'third attempt' to 'exterminate Ukraine'
"He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defence minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.
"He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.
"He blamed the war on US neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.
'When Russia threatens us, we trust them'
"He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. 'Phobia' means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational – when Russia threatens us, we trust them.
"He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbours.
"He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 27th of September.
'Withdraw your troops to international borders'
"He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.
"He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.
"He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.
Russia is not invincible, Polish FM says
"And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win the World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan and it didn’t win the Cold War.
"But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.
'They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine'
"Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.
"They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now."
Friday's UN Security Council meeting in New York marked the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier on Friday, the Polish foreign minister told the UN General Assembly that two years into Russia's war in Ukraine, the international community must "stay the course" in supporting Kyiv, while also ensuring accountability for war crimes.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday, February 23, 2024. Photo: PAP/Konrad Laskowski/MSZ
On the eve of the second anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Sikorski reaffirmed Poland's support for international efforts to hold Russia accountable for its crimes in Ukraine, news outlets reported.
While in New York, Sikorski held talks with UN Secretary-General António Guterres to discuss Russian aggression in Ukraine and the threat Moscow poses to global security, the Polish foreign ministry said.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, starting the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.
Monday is day 733 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: IAR, PAP, gov.pl
