11 May in 5:00 Anadolu Agency
According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), presently, landmines, cluster munitions, and explosive remnants of war (ERW) are found in over 70 countries and seven territories. It is essential to conceive that most countries and territories affected by these weapons are among the least developed countries. These weapons not only claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, mostly civilians, over the last decades and constitute an imminent deadly threat to millions of people’s lives and livelihoods.
Anadolu Agency reports that only in 2020, the UN recorded 4,663 civilian casualties caused by mines, ERWs, and cluster munitions. They also have a significant negative impact on post-conflict recovery and development as they undermine aid distribution, land cultivation, and construction and restoration of infrastructure and housing facilities.
Transcript:
Dmitry Kiselev: Our relations with the United States are really “hell”. Personally, I don’t recall them being at such a low ebb ever before. This is even worse than the Cold War times, in my opinion. Ambassadors have returned back to their home countries. What’s going to happen next? What is the possible scenario?
Sergey Lavrov: If it depended on us alone, we would gladly resume normal relations. The first possible step towards this, which I regard as obvious, is to zero out the measures restricting the work of Russian diplomats in the United States. It was as a response measure that we restricted the operations of American diplomats in Russia.
April 26, 2021
Russia is awaiting clarification from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Ukraine on the storage of anti-personnel mines in Vrbetice bypassing the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Zakharova noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry had seen reports of the German newspaper Die Welt on April 17, widely circulated by the international media, that there were “hundreds of antipersonnel mines” in warehouses in the Vrbetice.
“This information casts doubt on the good faith fulfillment by the Czech Republic of its obligations under the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. Similar questions arise also to Bulgaria, whose citizen, according to the New York Times, was the owner of the weapons stored in the warehouse, as well as to Ukraine as a potential recipient of these means,” Zakharova noted.