United Nations.- Western countries and their allies demanded this Friday that Russia, during the Security Council of the UNcease the attacks on civilians and on Ukraine’s infrastructure, which have intensified in recent days and which herald a harsh winter for Ukrainians.
The session was requested by France and the United States to listen to the UN Under-Secretary General, Rosemary DiCarlo, who echoed the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry in Ukraine, presented this week, and which unequivocally established that “the Russian troops are responsible for the vast majority of identified violations of international humanitarian law and the laws of war.
DiCarlo recalled among these violations “summary executions, illegal confinement, torture, ill-treatment or sexual violation”, in addition to the fact that Russia prevents access to prisoners of war by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as hinders access from an investigation team to the attacked prison in the Ukrainian city of Olenivka.
European countries maintained a united front with the United States to criticize Russia for disregarding the Geneva Convention and also other countries – Emirates, Ghana or Gabon – asked that civilians be respected above all, in an indirect allusion to Russia.
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, once again criticized the West’s double standards when it came to talking about Ukraine, because for eight years – he said – they did not worry about Ukrainian attacks on civilians in Donbas (the Russian-speaking region of Ukraine, now absorbed by Moscow), nor did they issue the slightest criticism when the strategic bridge linking the Crimean peninsula with Russia was bombed.
The ambassador did not deny that in these latest Russian attacks in Ukraine there have been civilian casualties, or that vital infrastructure has been damaged, but he attributed it to the poor work of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses, which supposedly had diverted the first trajectory of the projectiles.
Other countries, such as China, India and Brazil, insisted that the exchange of accusations is useless and that it is time to begin negotiations in search of a diplomatic solution to the war, after almost eight months of fighting.
“Some ideas (of negotiations) have been advanced, the Council should explore them, its role should be to contribute to the negotiations,” said Brazilian representative Ronaldo Costa Filho.
