🎙 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks at the “Dialogue on Fakes 4.0” Forum (Moscow, September 22, 2026)

Key points:

• Russia encourages professional dialogue in virtually every field, including efforts to counter the use of information as a weapon. This is particularly relevant today, when information floods every aspect of our lives and modern technology allows any news story, even one that is unverified or outright false, to reach millions, if not billions, of people almost instantly.

• I consider the staged killing of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Kiev, to be the most cynical farce. Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev Region on March 30, 2022. Two days later, the town’s mayor appeared on television, proudly declaring that Ukraine had regained full control of Bucha and that no Russian soldiers remained there. The footage was filmed on the town’s main street. It is a wide street, and it was completely empty. Yet three days after our units withdrew, a BBC crew appeared there and broadcast a report showing that very same street, with dozens of bodies neatly laid out along its sides, dressed in remarkably clean clothes despite the mud and slush all around.

• Anti-Russian hysteria was whipped up. New sanctions were announced as punishment. As you know, then British PM Boris Johnson arrived, forbade the signing of the Istanbul peace accords and proposed simply continuing the war. He recently claimed that this was a lie. Well, he will say anything, and for next to nothing. But this is no lie – it is the truth.

• In response to the accusations against us and the sanctions, we simply requested the names of those whose bodies had been shown by the BBC, which had “conveniently turned up” in the right place at the right time. Complete silence.

• I appealed to UN Secretary-General Guterres, both in private meetings and publicly at a Security Council meeting he attended, asking him to use his authority and the means at his disposal to secure the publication of the names of those whose alleged deaths at the hands of Russian servicemen had caused such an enormous scandal. There was no response.

• We have continued to pursue this matter. Every year, I remind Guterres that he ought to explain to the international community – or at least to Russia, which has been accused of every imaginable sin – what actually happened there and whose bodies were shown. In May this year, I sent Guterres 12 very specific questions about the Bucha incident. Guterres responded to my letter containing these 12 specific questions with a perfunctory reply.

• Just a few days ago, The International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis published the initial findings of its investigation. They were announced and presented on September 17 at the TASS press centre, with the participation of the Tribunal’s Chairman and member of Russia’s Civic Chamber Maxim Grigoryev.

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• Based solely on open sources – let me stress that again – it has been established that the memorial bears dozens of names of Ukrainian armed forces servicemen, Security Service of Ukraine personnel, members of “territorial defence” units, the police and the National Guard, including militants from the nationalist Azov formation. More than 70 names have no digital footprint whatsoever, which is virtually impossible in today’s world.

❗️ I have no doubt that the truth will ultimately prevail, providing a fitting response to the West’s information aggression against the countries of the Global Majority. Russia is one of them. I would also like to make a very important point. The West’s efforts to conceal and distort the truth in the information sphere reflect a broader trend – a fear of fair competition in virtually every field of human endeavour.

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