Ukraine criticized Russia's stay in the Security Council before the UN

Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Sergii Kislitsia criticized the Security Council and asked its members about the number of meetings that will take place “with the same result” without changing Russia's role in the body.

Kislitsia noted that the agency failed to prevent war and failed to stop it, demanding that members take “seriously” the question of how to resolve the problem of “dubious Russian presence” in the Council.

“Why does this body have no influence in Russia's war against Ukraine? The answer is obvious. Because the Security Council continues to pretend that Russia is a full and legitimate permanent member,” he criticized at a meeting convened by the agency.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN highlighted the deaths of 7 people in Lviv and the death of three others in Kharkiv, as well as a medical operation on a three-year-old boy named Myron.

“The Russians left their ammunition behind to pack their vehicles with stolen computers, televisions, mobile phones, clothes, carpets, washing machines and even toilets,” he said, recalling that, as this happens, violence in the Donbas region is intensified.

“The situation in Mariupol remains the most critical. Thousands of civilians are still in the city. Hundreds of them, including children, have taken refuge in the Azovstal plant. They need immediate and safe evacuation,” he said, adding that there are blockades for humanitarian convoys across the country.

In this regard, he acknowledged the importance of the appeal of UN Secretary General António Guterres, who called for a humanitarian pause to allow the opening of a series of humanitarian corridors.

“None of the 38 attempts by the Ukrainian authorities to organize humanitarian corridors for civilians in Mariupol and Volnovakha were successful due to Russia's unwillingness,” he added regarding the evacuation of civilians.

“In the territories controlled by Russia, including the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, invaders build filtration camps (detention centers) and torture chambers. They continue to kidnap representatives of local authorities and activists,” Kislitsia said.

Thus, he estimated at 20,000 Ukrainians in these detention centers on the Mangush-Nikolske-Yalta line and about 5,000 or 7,000 people in the village of Bezymenna, in the Donetsk region.

“To date, more than 500,000 Ukrainians, including 121,000 children, were forcibly transferred to the territory of Russia. Such actions by Russian invaders can be described as kidnapping and require a determined response from the international community,” he said.

THE RUSSIAN VERSION

For its part, Russia pointed out that the West is trying to portray Ukraine as “the pure and innocent white sheep”, an image that does not fit with the eight-year war by the Kiev “regime” and the “years of sabotage” of the Minsk agreements.

“According to official data alone, since 2014, at least 1.7 million people have applied for Russian citizenship, refugee status or temporary asylum in our country,” defended Moscow's deputy envoy to the UN, Dimitri Poliansky.

In this regard, he pointed out that “the mass exodus of Ukrainians” is not new. “According to the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, from 1990 to 2021, the country's population decreased by a quarter, from 54 million to 41 million people,” he said.

“I am not burdening these numbers to belittle the scale of the migration challenges that Ukraine and its neighbors face today. I just want to disagree with attempts to 'zero' the history of post-Soviet Ukraine, and turn a blind eye to all its problems,” he stressed.

Thus, he said that “the persecution of the Russian language and those who speak it” is not remembered and charged the website Peacemaker for publishing the personal data of Ukrainian citizens “who criticize the Maidan regime.”

He also indicated that arms manufacturers in Western countries “are rubbing their hands” and noted that the share value of the main British arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, increased by 24 percent, and the shares of Thales, which produces anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, by 42 percent.

“The Russian economy, as you know, is successfully facing the pressure of sanctions, finding in all this situation new opportunities for its own development and new reliable partners. The only country that loses with everything that happens in every way and every dimension is Ukraine,” he said.

Poliansky also criticized that there has been no conviction for the firing of cluster bombs on the village of Golovchino in the Belgorod region. “All the evidence is fixed and recorded,” he added.

“The radicals and neo-Nazis themselves do not disdain hiding from our military at the Azovstal plant because, after a month of blockade, they suddenly reported that all this time they were supposedly with civilians. This is despite the fact that until yesterday they did not report it,” he said.

Finally, he said that Russia found evidence that the special surveillance mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine was spying on Kiev “by transmitting data from security cameras to the Ukrainian Army.” He also referred to the use of the OSCE mission's armored vehicles by the Ukrainian armed formations.

“Today (it) is trying not only to rewrite modern history in an anti-Russian vein, but also to please the craziest fabrications of several of our Eastern European neighbors about the role of the USSR in the liberation of Europe and the world as a whole,” he said.

(With information from Europa Press)

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