Four Russian UN representatives have been accused of delivering the same speech “with minimal changes” eight times between 2008 and 2015, according to St. Petersburg blogger Yury Shtengel, who published transcripts of the offending addresses on his LiveJournal website on Friday.
The LiveJournal post, titled “Groundhog Day at the UN” — a reference to the 1993 U.S. comedic film about an arrogant weatherman finding himself in a time loop — quoted publicly available Foreign Ministry documents, alleging that the same speech was given eight times, with the exception of the introduction and some minor additions.
The diplomats have offered a dependably unchanging view on a resolution calling for the elimination of racial discrimination and xenophobia, debated yearly by the UN General Assembly's social, humanitarian and cultural affairs committee, the RBC news portal reported Friday.
Every year, the vote prompted Russian delegates to take the floor and urge the committee not to allow any “rewriting of World War II history,” the report added.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by RBC as saying that “the practice of using speeches with minimal changes was normal, as [diplomats] presented officially agreed positions.”
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