Sir, – "Donald Trump's foreign policy: Going Putin's way" (Editorial, October 19th) contains certain number of misstatement of facts and erroneous assessment of Russian policies that need to be addressed. Russia did not bomb hospitals and other civilian sites in Syria, never used chemical weapons there or elsewhere, it did not invade Georgia, neither it occupied Crimea, nor started the war in the eastern Ukraine. To claim otherwise is just to make false assertion similar to the clichés in the article about "autocratic" President Putin. This makes up for a decidedly distorted picture of the world.
It is a pity, because it steers away from recognising real problems of the world and finding real solutions to them.
In real world it has been Russia that prevented Syria falling into the hands of Isil terrorists and persistently promoted the process of political settlement in that country. And in real world, unfortunately, it was the Kiev regime which in 2014 turned its armed forces against the people in Donbass, who did not accept the coup d’état in February 2014. Now with the new president elected by Ukrainians on the promise of peace, everybody is waiting for him to fully implement Minsk agreements endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2202 (2015), which is the only way to end the civil war in our neighbouring country. Russia along with European partners in the “Normandy format” has been working to assist in this process.
Russia’s foreign policy is not about “grabbing” anything – we stand for a fair and peaceful world order, we always look for diplomatic means to settle conflicts, for developing constructive cooperation rather than entertaining a concept of “zero-sum game”. To deny all that is a serious and self-defeating mistake. – Yours, etc,
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YURIY FILATOV,
Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary
of the Russian Federation
to Ireland,
Orwell Road,
Rathgar,
Dublin 14.