H.E. Mr. Yuriy Filatov:

I thank the Deputies for the questions. I will try to sum up the main subjects. There is no question but that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state. That is an axiom and there is no quarrel with that. Ukraine has a right to live peacefully and securely within its borders. The point I have been trying to make is that one cannot live in a vacuum. A country cannot provide for its security without any regard for the security of its neighbours and adjoining states. That is the whole heart of the matter. If the security interests of one state overlap with those of another, those countries must talk and devise a viable rapprochement or agreement which would carry the security of both states. That is the logic with all our initiatives. I emphasise that the way it has been developing makes it abundantly clear that our way of doing things is by dialogue and looking for a peaceful and political negotiated solution. There is no other way. War is by no means in our plans. If there is a war, it is not because of Russia. I hope, and am pretty sure, there will not be any war.

If one has looked at every newspaper every day for some months, one will have seen the same thing repeated time and again, that is, there has been a build up of troops. There has not been any troop build-up in Russia in the adjoining areas to the border with Ukraine. Whatever troops are there are on Russian territory in areas of their permanent deployment. There has been no escalation over recent months. We do not trust any so-called US intelligence that points to the contrary. The hysteria looks to us as if it is a deliberate attempt to heat up the situation, create a scenario for military conflict and exploit it in a number of ways, including a political way in propaganda terms, etc. Not only is NATO pushing its military infrastructure to the Russian border, it is brazen enough to tell us to move our armed forces away from the border in our own territory.

This is not the way to run the railroad at all.

Regarding de-escalation, I think members of the committee would agree that you cannot de-escalate something you have escalated. We have not done anything in terms of escalation. That brings us to the previous point. The troops are there. They have been there. That is the deployment of a western military region. There is nothing there to support the theory that tomorrow there will be a war with Ukraine. This is ridiculous if this word is permitted; I hope it is parliamentary enough.

Let us move down the list. I do not think any responsible politician would think of anything other than a peaceful and political solution to this. We have concerns. President Putin himself just yesterday when he met the Prime Minister of Hungary in Moscow talked to the press about that. He was absolutely clear. He does not have excessive enthusiasm about the responses to our initiative, but he is very bent on pressing ahead with these well-thought-through suggestions, indeed demands, because we have to demand that. We have an imminent real threat to our national security. What would you think if some other country or bloc - military organisation - had strike missile systems at your border with five minutes flying time to Moscow? I do not think any responsible leader would be able to ignore that simple fact. We are looking for dialogue. We will be insisting on doing that quickly and without any protraction.

On the issue of exercises, as members might appreciate, I am very fond of this issue and recently I have spoken on it many times. I said it last Monday at the beginning of this whole story that it was not a big deal to begin with and it is not a big deal right now. We must remember that our navy is within its right to carry out the exercises. We talked about the fact that there is no message involved here to Ireland or elsewhere. Even the scale of the exercise is just two ships. I do not think it is enough to send any message except that it is routine training, planned probably two years in advance with no idea of pressing any buttons.

There have been plenty of amusing stories saying that there were some kinds of frantic exchanges between our governments. I would not delve into the communications between our governments, but there was nothing frantic about that. I do not have an exact date of when they received notification. It was probably last Saturday, the week before. That was done in a more or less technical manner. There have been some public comments which I, personally, did not appreciate. There was no frantic handling of this affair. However, what was there was willingness to look into the real practical concerns which, to our mind, the fishermen had. It was my initiative to invite them to have a talk, to listen to what they had in mind and hear what the problem really was. We looked at the map and at that point it became clear that there actually was not a problem. They did not have any plans of pirate-like activity or Greenpeace-like actions. These are very sensible hard-working people. They have only been concerned with their well-being. They have the quota opening on 1 February. They are looking at the opportunity to get their quota without any hindrance. It just made sense.

All in all, the area of the fishing grounds and the area of the planned exercise barely overlapped. That was not the question. However, they asked if we could ensure that nobody would go into their area and they would certainly not go into the area of the exercises. If that is the issue, we certainly tried to accommodate the whole thing. The conclusion was if there is a problem - there is a problem for the well-being of a great number of fishermen in the area - the decision was made on humanitarian grounds to relocate the exercises to avoid the completely unnecessary hardship for the fishing industry of Ireland as well as decrease the risk of any incident at sea. I think that was a responsible sensible solution which stands.

What else? The cables, my favourite. It seems like whenever you go through the Atlantic in the general area you almost certainly cross the routes of transatlantic cables. I do not put any water into the theories which are abundant that these exercises or other exercises are somehow linked to this James Bond-like story. Looking into today's newspapers, I would suggest to the proponents of this that they should care about cables in the central part of Ireland which have been cut for profit. That is probably the real problem for Ireland or at least for the rural part which lacks Internet and telephone.

I would not want to be in a position to comment on anything pertaining to the internal affairs of Belarus, which is an independent country. There has been a period of real problem there and we cannot stand by because we are bound by not only many historical, family, economic and social ties, but by the agreements on the union of two states. We have been very active making sure the situation develops into the stand-down mode. It is not easy. It is not a black-and-white picture there and has not been.

I am sure the committee members would appreciate that I am not in a position to go any further. It is a matter of very peculiar and acute attention what is and has been going on in Belarus and we support every effort which is being made there to resolve these sociopolitical problems peacefully without any problem and without any loss of life or hindrance to the population or to freedoms of the population. Let me put it this way.

I tried to cover more or less all the issues. If I forgot something, please excuse me. It was a big list.