On the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Zurich-London Agreements, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova referred to the history of the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, criticized Britain and expressed her country’s readiness to contribute to the process of inter-community talks and the settlement of the Cyprus issue on the basis of the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council.

“The Russian Federation, being a responsible shareholder of the international community and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is firmly and unalterably guided by the principles according to which the compromise for the settlement of the Cyprus issue must be reached, as provided for in the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council UN, through voluntary talks of the Cypriot communities with mandatory, careful consideration of their valid concerns and interests. And of course without outside pressure, without using this endless weaving of deadlines, some external prescriptions”, said the Russian representative in the context of the weekly briefing of the editors and correspondents of the Russian and international press, noting that “from our side we are ready honestly and in principle to help in this project”.

Recalling the dates of the signing of the Zurich-London agreements, on February 11 and 19, 1959, M. Zakharova characterized the independence received by the Republic of Cyprus as “severely limited” from the start, as “London, Athens and Ankara received the status of guarantor of the new state and possibilities for intervention in its internal affairs. Greek and Turkish military forces were stationed on the island, Britain retained two areas of the island with a total area of ​​99 square miles, i.e. 256 square kilometers, as sovereign bases, a number of other installations and a whole package of privileges of the former metropolis.

In the opinion of the representative of Russian diplomacy, the agreements in question, which were the basis of the Constitution of Cyprus, “from their inception contained a dangerous conflict dynamic, which manifested itself in the most dramatic way in the bloody conflicts between the communities in December 1963 and the subsequent period, in 1974, led to the tragic division of the island.”

“The atavism of the colonial era preserved in Zurich and London has not been overcome even to our time. It allows the British to behave aggressively in the region today, to ignore international law, to apply military force without the approval of the UN Security Treaty. All this undoubtedly undermines regional stability, fosters tension on the island and around it and does not contribute to the settlement of the extremely protracted Cyprus problem,” said Ms. Zakharova and added that the Soviet Union during the entire decolonization process “supported the fair demands of the Cypriots for independence”, but also “repeatedly indicated that the British Government, by imposing a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue, was in fact seeking not to help, but to consolidate its state in the new, already historical conditions and to sow seeds of discord between communities of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots”.