Although published on 02 October 2025, this speech by Ambassador Neil Holland qualifies for the Addison De Witt lie of the month award.

Neil Holland is the current Head of the United Kingdom’s Delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, appointed in May 2023.

What follows is a discussion of the Ambassador's falsehoods.

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has been built on a foundation of falsehoods

Ambassador Holland examines the various falsehoods that Russia deployed in seeking to justify its illegal and unjust war of aggression against Ukraine [with some falsehoods of his own].

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The recent Moscow Mechanism report further highlighted widespread and systematic mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, reflecting Russia’s ongoing disregard for International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law.

What this falsehood fails to mention is the widespread and sytematic abuse of Russian PoWs, recently confirmed by a Dutch mercenary fighting for Ukraine, and the widespread and systematic abuse of Ukraininan citizens in the east by Ukrainian state forces.

The latter is even more mystifying as just some of these abuses are documented in OSCE observer Benoit Paré's book What I Saw in Ukraine, which the Ambassador to the OSCE clearly hasn't read.

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This week marks three years since Russia’s unlawful attempts to annex Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts.  Russia attempted to justify these actions, along with its eleven-year occupation of Crimea, by claiming to protect Russian-speaking populations. But there is no credible evidence that these communities faced any genuine threat.
 
This falsehood is just nonsense as the threat was more than credible - so credible that it resulted in one of the largest migrations east (to Russia) since WW2. These people were not abducted by Russia but forced out by the punitive actions of the Ukrainian state.
 
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Firstly, the assertion that Ukraine needed to be demilitarised is unfounded. Indeed, Russia itself thought the Special Military Operation would last three days. Ukraine posed no threat to Russia; its military was significantly smaller, and it had voluntarily given up its nuclear arsenal...
 
The SMO might have only lasted a few days if the West had not undermined the 2022 Istanbul peace talks in favour of fighting on to cause the death of hundreds of thousands on Russians and Ukrainians. Something that, if not a legal war crime, is certainly a moral one. And Ukraine did not voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons, it was largely compelled to do so by the USA who did not want another nuclear-armed state in Europe to worry about and most likely Ukraine did not have the launch codes for the weapons they had anyway.

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Secondly, the objective to “denazify” Ukraine is a misapplication of historical facts.  Ukraine’s president is Jewish and has family members who were Holocaust victims.  Far-right parties received only 2.15% of the vote in the last parliamentary election, which further undermines Russia’s claims.

This is a completely laughable falsehood. Share of the vote means nothing when compared to actions on the ground. It was not share of the vote that shot Maidan protestors from nearby hotels or incinerated protestors in the Odessa House of Trade Unions. The fact that Zelensky is Jewish means nothing to ultra-nationalists who don't care if he is Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Martian as long as he does not get in their way. Otherwise he will be dealt with - like dozens of others who have been publicly assassinated by Ukraine - as was publicly threatened by a far-right leader. The Ambassador also conveniently fails to acknowledge that it was Ukrainian Nazis who contributed their share to the Holocaust by murdering tens of thousands of Jews (and others e.g. Poles) during WW2.

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And thirdly, President Putin’s claim of acting to prevent NATO expansion does not stand up to scrutiny.  NATO is a defensive alliance, and membership is voluntary.  Allies do not seek expansion...

What does not stand up to scrutiny is that NATO is a defensive alliance. Tell that to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia where the real threat to the West came from the waves of immigrants that flooded West as a result of interference in, and destabilisation of, functioning states. NATO is a self-declared enemy of Russia, actively pursuing a proxy war in Ukraine, so why should Russia want more enemy troops on its doorstep when their role may be 'defensive' today but 'offensive' tomorrow? 

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The 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, where Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence and three years of determined resistance demonstrate Ukraine’s clear desire for self-determination and freedom from external control.  

Putin has never said he wanted to control Ukraine and anyway the Russian army deployed to Ukraine is not big enough to achieve that. Furthermore, why on earth would anyone - least of all Putin - want to be trying to control a western Ukraine full of ultra-nationalist 'partisans' backed by NATO? This is more nonsense.

Unfortunately Ukraine has got neither self-determination nor freedom from external control since it is now - thanks to NATO's proxy war - a virtually bankrupt, vassal state under the control of the USA and the EU. When Zelensky was elected, the electorate voted for his platform of 'peace in the east' but that clearly expressed 'desire' is far from what they got. 

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What a lot of porkies in such a short speech.

Addison De Witt would be proud.