Russia’s Ambassador in Belgrade on Friday accused the ambassadors of the UK, Canada, Norway and Poland of misrepresenting events in Ukraine.

The four ambassadors warned in an opinion piece for Politika daily on June 3 that a lot of false information was being released about the situation in Ukraine on a daily basis and detailed known facts about Russia’s invasion. “There is a lot of intentionally released false information from daily lies (such as that they had no intention of attacking Ukraine to science fiction – bats, birds and biological weapons),” the four ambassadors wrote.

Ambassador Alexander Botsan-Harchenko said that the four ambassadors “twisted the current events in Ukraine and around it to the point that they are not recognizable” adding that he was forced to react to their opinion piece in the pro-government daily “for the sake of Serbian readers who deserve to know the truth”.

“We feel that the authors should look to their own attitudes towards the shameless violation of international law by their states,” he wrote, recalling the 1999 NATO air campaign against FR Yugoslavia in which the UK, Canada and Norway took part with the support of Poland.

“I regret that, in describing the Ukraine crisis, diplomats with surprisingly selective memories, intentionally overlooked the coup d’etat in Kyiv in 2014 (Poland was one of the guarantors of the implementation of an agreement between the Ukrainian authorities and opposition which the opposition violated immediately). No mention was made of the fact that the Kyiv regime sabotaged the Minsk accord for seven years which included the reintegration of the Donbas (also, in the case of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija they forgot that their protegees in Pristina have obstructed the Brussels agreement for nine years),” Botsan-Harchenko said.

He accused the ambassadors of not caring about the true situation in Ukraine and wanting to demean Russia and glorify “the criminal Kyiv regime”, “ignoring the crimes of Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi armed formations … and marginalizing the issue of military bio-labs in Ukraine which is embarrassing for the West”.
The Russian ambassador claimed that the global food crisis was not Russia’s fault but was linked to the COVID crisis and blamed official Kyiv for mining its ports and not allowing passage to merchant ships.

According to him, there is no dependence in relations between Belgrade and Moscow and no inequality. He expressed confidence that the West will not be able to force the Serbs to impose sanctions on Russia.