Permanent Representative to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov says that Israel rejects the idea of joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but demands that other countries of the region fully comply with it
Permanent Representative to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov says that Israel rejects the idea of joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but demands that other countries of the region fully comply with it
At least 175 people, mostly students, were killed in an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school on February 28
Iranian media have released previously unseen footage showing the immediate aftermath of a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
The Shajareh Tayyebeh school in southern Iran was hit on February 28, in the early days of the US and Israeli bombing campaign. T
At least 175 people, mostly students, were killed in an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school on February 28
Iranian media have released previously unseen footage showing the immediate aftermath of a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
The Shajareh Tayyebeh school in southern Iran was hit on February 28, in the early days of the US and Israeli bombing campaign. The building was located near a naval base but separated from military facilities by a fence visible in satellite imagery.
A short, disturbing video shared by SNN TV on Sunday shows two frightened young girls in what appear to be dust-covered school uniforms. One girl has bloodstains on her face and headscarf. Several people are seen running toward a building engulfed in smoke.
A video taken immediately after the explosion at Shajareh Taybeh Minab School in Iran has emerged. pic.twitter.com/e07UMRS1e8
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied that American forces were responsible. However, multiple investigations by media outlets and analysts have concluded that the school was likely hit by a US-made missile, with evidence pointing to a Tomahawk strike.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in early March that the US would never deliberately target civilians and that the incident was under review.
Iran has described the strike as a war crime, while the UN called it “a grave assault on children, on education, and on the future of an entire community.”
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, says that the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf management will not be based on "delusional posts" of the US president
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, says that the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf management will not be based on "delusional posts" of the US president
The UAV struck a 52-story building not far from the Russian capital’s business district
A Ukrainian drone has struck a residential skyscraper not far from Moscow’s business district, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said.
The UAV struck the 52-story residential building known as the House on Mosfilmovskaya Street, a modernist landmark built in the early 2010s. The impact reportedly occurred around the 36th floor. Sobyanin said there were no casualties.
Phot
The UAV struck a 52-story building not far from the Russian capital’s business district
A Ukrainian drone has struck a residential skyscraper not far from Moscow’s business district, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said.
The UAV struck the 52-story residential building known as the House on Mosfilmovskaya Street, a modernist landmark built in the early 2010s. The impact reportedly occurred around the 36th floor. Sobyanin said there were no casualties.
Photos and videos from the scene show damage to the facade and debris scattered on the street.
The attack took place ahead of Victory Day on May 9, one of Russia’s most important public holidays, marked by a military parade on Red Square.
Dozens of police cars and ambulances are at the scene.
Eyewitnesses told RT they heard a powerful explosion, with some saying they saw a flash in the sky and smoke rising from the building.
Ukraine has stepped up strikes deep inside Russia in recent weeks, launching hundreds of kamikaze drones a day. Although successful strikes in Moscow are rare, Ukrainian drones damaged high-rise buildings in Moscow City, the capital’s iconic business district, in 2023.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accuses the State Department of pressuring diplomats’ children
The US State Department has quietly revived Biden-era tactics of imposing American birthright citizenship on the children of Russian diplomats, in violation of international norms, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in an op-ed on Monday.
RT is republishing the official English version of the op-ed:
While President Trum
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accuses the State Department of pressuring diplomats’ children
The US State Department has quietly revived Biden-era tactics of imposing American birthright citizenship on the children of Russian diplomats, in violation of international norms, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in an op-ed on Monday.
RT is republishing the official English version of the op-ed:
While President Trump is trying to bring order to the American migration mess cooked up by his predecessors, his own staff are, behind his back, engaging in intrigue and are further damaging already ailing Russia-US relations in the sphere of migration.
One of Trump’s central campaign promises was that there would be no legalization of illegal migrants.
Said and done. The only difference is that thanks to the deep state, which is clearly walking in the opposite direction from its current president towards a new one, things have turned out exactly the other way around.
Picture the following.
A Russian diplomat working in the United States receives a phone call from the State Department. It would appear that a contact has been established. Contact has indeed been established, but not of a working kind:
“Mr […]?” goes a State Department employee.
“Yes,” the Russian diplomat replies.
“Do you have a son named Ivan?”
“Yes.”
Sitting at his desk, with his child at school a couple of kilometers away from his office, the man felt his heart drop into a bottomless abyss.
“The US State Department informs you that your son is a citizen of the United States,” the voice – whether a bureaucrat or perhaps already an AI embedded within one – tells him.
What follows is a dialogue that the finest surrealist dystopian writers might envy:
“My son is a citizen of Russia and holds no other citizenship. The US State Department has repeatedly issued my son, as a member of a diplomat’s family, US visas. This contradicts common sense and US law, which combined create a uniquely unambiguous interpretation,” the Russian diplomat responds, instantly recalling his [Moscow State Institute of International Relations] MGIMO studies, Lavrov, and international law in its entirety.
“Your son has been granted US citizenship without his consent by virtue of being born on American soil. The fact that neither he nor you were ever informed of this, and that visas were issued to him as to a foreign national, is a technical error,” the voice reads from a document.
“But we do not need US citizenship; we never asked for it and will never accept it,” the Russian diplomat is practically yelling in the receiver.
“Be on notice that your child is our citizen with all the ensuing consequences, and you cannot renounce this!”
The line goes dead, and so does the logic of whatever the United States is doing domestically and abroad.
No, there is no need to look for fault on the part of Russian diplomats here. There is none. Our colleagues do their work, process all documents in accordance with Russian legislation and the requirements of the Vienna Conventions, and respect US laws. When children are born on US territory, they promptly file papers to Russian citizenship knowing full well that there will be no issues with US citizenship, since diplomats are not automatically subject to the right of the soil under local law – no one can be forced to become a citizen of a foreign country.
However, the law in the United States is reminiscent of a mad tea party with the Mad Hatter.
Let’s go over it once again, but this time seriously.
The deep state in the United States has created a new problem to exert pressure on Russian diplomats, disregarding the fact that this has become a stark example of the decline of the much-vaunted American democracy. Now the State Department – or those behind the facade of American diplomacy – have begun to extend US citizenship to children of Russian consular staff born under American jurisdiction until they reach adulthood, effectively by force, under the pretext of the constitutionally enshrined right of the soil and the supposedly limited nature of consular immunity.
It’s absurd and violates every rule in the book, and delivers a blow to their own president, but who cares when yet another act of Russophobia, so carefully cultivated by the Democratic Party, is at stake?
The Americans began applying this discriminatory practice against Russian personnel in 2023, as if deliberately laying a mine under Trump in order to present him in the most ridiculous light before everyone, such as the Latin American workers invited to the United States, who during the pandemic quite literally carried the country out of hell on their shoulders; the voters; the international community, which watches with astonishment as their compatriots are denied US citizenship and sent home in disgrace at a time when it is forced upon Russian diplomats. It looks like a scene from the Spider Man comic in which he becomes entangled in his own web.
To reiterate, the supreme law of the United States was not amended during this period, nor were bilateral conventions on diplomatic and consular relations revised.
The exemption concerning children of foreign diplomats is spelled out in virtually all internal regulations. An entire chapter of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services policy manual and a provision in the Code of Federal Regulations are devoted to this matter. Both documents clearly state that children of foreign diplomats do not acquire US citizenship by the right of the soil, as they enjoy diplomatic immunity and are not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the host country.
Moreover, this legal norm was re-affirmed by the US Supreme Court back in 1898 in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Here is a direct quotation from the court ruling:
“The requirement that a person be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States excludes the application of this rule to children born of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state, children born of enemy aliens during occupation, and children of members of Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.”
The US side has always taken pride in its system of case law, so the complete disregard of this well-known ruling provides a very clear characterization of the actions of the US foreign policy establishment.
It is symptomatic that the stepped up activity by the US State Department in the matter of unlawfully granting US citizenship to the children of employees of Russian diplomatic missions – citizenship they neither need nor are allowed by local authorities to refuse – is taking place precisely now, when, on the basis of agreements between the leaders of Russia and the United States, attempts are being made to remove such irritants.
Not merely irritants, because thousands of people who spent years trying to naturalize, pleading to be granted citizenship or at least some form of papers are being deported from the United States. They did not violate local laws; they worked honestly for what they believed to be the good of their new homeland, trusting the previous administration in the White House.
Judge for yourself. US President Trump is pursuing a policy aimed at ending the automatic granting of citizenship to children of foreign nationals born under American jurisdiction. The White House, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security have launched a large-scale, unprecedented anti-immigration campaign designed to reduce the flow of migrants. They stop at nothing, including rechecking data submitted during the naturalization process. The media report monthly quotas for investigations into potential revocation of US citizenship. Information is being circulated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement back in 2025 received a green light to use spyware for remote installation on the mobile devices of illegal immigrants and activists among US citizens who oppose mass deportation policies.
At the same time, the United States is systematically violating its host country agreement with the UN by failing to issue visas to foreign diplomats planning to attend relevant events at UN headquarters. One recent example is the disruption of the participation of the Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry in the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Committee on Information on April 27, 2026.
Against this backdrop, such demonstrative targeted interest by US authorities in the children of employees of Russian foreign institutions is causing genuine concern. Not for our diplomats, but for the mental health of American officials.
The inconsistency in Washington’s actions on this track borders on the bipolar and calls into question the possibility of reaching agreements with US authorities on this extremely important and sensitive issue for us.
Coercive actions against the personnel of our diplomatic missions contradict the norms of international law and bilateral agreements, which guarantee immunity from the jurisdiction of the host country. With regard to consular staff, the State Department is obliged to be guided by the provisions of the 1964 bilateral Consular Convention, which grants this category of Russian citizens a broader scope of immunities than the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
According to Article 24 of the 1964 Convention, consular officers or employees, as well as members of their families, are exempt from all forms of compulsory obligations. For more than 60 years since the conclusion of the 1964 Consular Convention, it has been interpreted and applied by the parties as excluding the possibility of forcibly extending the citizenship of the host state to the children of consular officers and employees of the sending state. And it is not only a matter of the letter of the law.
The arbitrary granting of US citizenship to such children potentially provides Washington with a lever for improper pressure on our personnel – what if a child were to be abducted under the pretext, for example, of juvenile law or the need to verify gender compliance as part of another wave of the new normal? We have seen many such examples.
The Russian side does not recognize the imposition of US citizenship on Russian citizens born into the families of our diplomatic, administrative-technical, and consular personnel in the United States. We will demand from the Americans confirmation in each specific case that the newborn is not subject to US jurisdiction and enjoys all the immunities and privileges provided for by the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular relations, as well as by bilateral agreements.
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