Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Arria-Formula Meeting on Atrocities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Against Civilians
Opening remarks
Colleagues,
We are glad to use this opportunity to hold another round of discussion, which started in August 2024 and then continued in October 2024 in the same informal setting of the Arria-formula meetings. We believe it is important to bring to the attention of the international community heinous crimes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine commit on a daily basis against innocent civilians.
As Members of the Security Council know, we consistently bring into the spotlight during our formal briefings criminal policies of the Kiev regime against its own citizens, especially those who dare to express dissenting and diverse views different from those of the Zelensky clique. That is why more and more Ukrainians call their country the “Zelensky concentration camp”. During the SC meeting in January, we highlighted blood-chilling confessions of the former Verhovnaya Rada deputy Mr. Artem Dmytruk who was tortured and severely beaten by the officers of the Security Service of Ukraine in an attempt to extort confession of high treason. It is telling that the main accusation against him was his principled position in defense of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
You can gather from this unsettling story how the Ukrainian authorities really feel about the citizens of their country, especially those with Russian identity. Since the unconstitutional coup-d’état in 2014 people living in the southeastern part of Ukraine have become disposable to the Kiev regime which launched a full-fledged war against the Russian-speaking Donbass region. Zelensky vividly betrayed this sentiment, when he called all Russian speakers “species” and suggested to anyone feeling a connection to the Russian culture to just “buzz off” to Russia for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
There is mounting evidence demonstrating how the Ukrainian Russians were tortured, harassed, maimed, killed and massacred throughout recent years. Systematic atrocities and mass grave violations of norms and principles of the international humanitarian law that have become a hallmark of Kiev’s military strategy are being meticulously and painstakingly collected and registered by relevant Russian agencies. We believe that it is our duty to expose the truth about the years of terror to remind those siding with the Kiev regime of whom they support in reality. These efforts are also indispensable to ensure accountability for anyone who committed these heinous crimes against innocent civilians. And there have been already several lawsuits and sentences to murderers and torturers. This process has only started and anyone involved in these crimes will be identified and prosecuted.
The above-mentioned attitude to Russian speakers as subhumans or “Untermenschen” is also fully exposed when the Armed Forces of Ukraine are dealing with the population of the Donbass towns and cities, when they are told, these citizens, that they have to leave due to the advancement of the Russian Army. There is plenty of shocking testimonies of the victims of crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces against those in the Donetsk or Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions whom they suspect of awaiting Russian soldiers. Before their retreat, Ukrainian soldiers and their foreign accomplices commit the most brutal and unimaginable cruelties. They torture, rape, maim and shoot, often point-blank, civilian men, women, children and the elderly. They also deliberately destroy homes and civilian infrastructure to diminish chances of the residents to survive. Let’s watch a short video clip of two local residents of liberated cities Avdeevka and Novotroitskoe detailing the barbarities of the Ukrainian soldiers.
[Video 1 - Testimonies by victims in Avdeevka and Novotroitsk]
As you all know, most vulnerable people, such as women and children, are given special protection under the international humanitarian law. States are prohibited to take measures that are likely to cause physical suffering or destruction. The accounts presented demonstrate that the Kiev regime systematically and flagrantly violates principles of IHL and commits war crimes on a massive scale. The only ones who don’t notice it today are our selectively blind and deaf Western colleagues.
One of the appalling ways that the Armed Forces of Ukraine resort to is deliberately targeting civilians who are trying to evacuate cities. I’d like you to listen to the account of a survivor, who left Chasov Yar in the Donetsk People’s Republic with six other local residents. The Ukrainian artillery began targeting the civilians. They took shelter in a concrete bunker. The Ukrainian military, fully aware they were unarmed, cynically continued the bombardment, with shells and mines falling right near the shelter. Unfortunately, due to intentional pursuit from the Kiev’s brutal military, not everyone made it out alive.
[Video 2 - Testimonies by a witness in Chasov Yar]
At this point, you might be wondering what is the fundamental objective of these crimes, if there is any. Well, they sacrifice innocent people’ lives and rob children of their future for two reasons. First, as I mentioned earlier, the Kiev regime doesn’t value lives of the Russian-speaking population of those who have at least the slightest sympathy towards Russia, so the military are eager to take their anger out on civilians. Second, by doing so, they are simultaneously trying to carry out false-flag operations and to put the blame on the Russian soldiers. In the following video you’ll hear confessions from one of the captured Ukrainian militants who confirms the awful crimes and admits to driving out civilians from homes to establish firing points, killing all those who refused to leave.
[Video 3 - Testimonies by a Ukrainian POW]
No comment is needed here. There is nothing that can ever justify such heinous crimes and those who perpetrated them.
As we were preparing this meeting, another piece of evidence came to the surface. Our Arria-formula discussions last August and October were focused mainly on Kiev’s ill-fated military adventure in the form of incursion into the Kursk region of the Russian Federation. As we speak, the Ukrainian forces continue losing their positions at the battlefield, despite futile attempt to launch a counteroffensive earlier this month. The AFU are being steadily squeezed out of the Russian territory and now they control less than a third of the territory they captured last summer. As the Russian Army regains control of the towns, new proof of the crimes of the Ukrainian forces against the civilians comes to light.
[Video 4 - Bodies of civilians who were shot dead found in Russkoye Porechnoye]
We are now watching a graphic and unsettling footage. You can see how the Russian soldiers who liberated a village called Russkoye Porechnoye in the Kursk region are walking down into the basement of one of the residential buildings to check out for the Ukrainian militants. Instead, what they find horrified them. They found five bodies of elderly civilians, including women. All of them have signs of beating and torture, shot legs and tied hands. Earlier, in the basement of another house, the soldiers discovered the bodies of two civilians with similar signs of torture. I’d like to remind you that the AFU occupied the Kursk region. When they did so, V.Zelensky cynically claimed that his military allegedly acted friendly to the civilian population and provided it with humanitarian aid. Now you know how this looks like in reality.
The Investigative Committee of Russia has opened a criminal case against Ukrainian militants involved in the torture and killing of civilians in this village.
Such senseless acts of cruelty clearly demonstrate the evil terrorist nature of the Kiev regime. Russian investigative bodies uncover more evidence of immense suffering of the civilian population almost daily. The data is also being collected by the International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Since its establishment in March 2022, it quickly became one of the key bodies that registers the war crimes of the Kiev regime. It includes representatives of civil society from more than 30 countries, including those from the West. To date they have interviewed over a thousand victims and witnesses of the Ukrainian crimes and conducted public investigations.
Their new report details the intentional massacre of the residents of Selidovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine before and during their retreat. As mentioned in the Concept note, the apex of mass shootings of innocent civilians occurred on 22 October 2024 and several subsequent days, although some were killed earlier.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that all the materials presented today are available via the QR code that you now see on the screen and you have on your tables.
Concluding remarks
Colleagues,
We had no illusions about the scenario of our today’s meeting – we will provide you with evidence, irrefutable and verifiable evidence, and our Western colleagues will pretend that they saw nothing and heard nothing, repeating their mantras about Russian aggression and occupation of Ukraine. They prefer to live in the bubble of lies that was being inflated at least since 2014, taking them into a parallel reality. In this virtual reality Ukraine is a peaceful democratic country and Russia is a villain land-hungry autocratic neighbor. While reading out these mantras you lost sight of the reality where less and less people are buying these lies, because the emerging evidence of the crimes and the terrorist, Neo-Nazi true colors of the Kiev regime is overwhelming.
We have no doubt that one day the bubble of lies will explode and bury underneath in disgrace all those who were keeping it inflated. This moment will come regardless of whether you want it or not, it will come in the same way as the truth about Nazi concentration camps emerged in Europe several years after they were set in action by Hitler and his henchmen. And the records of our meeting on this subject will serve as the best proof of Western hypocrisy and double standards.
We thank all today’s participants, especially Vladimir Romanenko and Vladimir Pogorelov. Today your testimony was heard in the UN and across the world. We express condolences to all those inhabitants of Selidovo and other Donbass cities, as well as of peaceful villages in the Kursk region, whose relatives became victims by heinous Ukrainian crimes. The enemy will be defeated and all the perpetrators will be held accountable.
We heard today that Russia provided false account of events. Do you call the evidence provided to you by live witnesses of the crimes false account? By saying this, you insult this people who suffered terrible tragedy before their eyes inflicted upon them by the “valiant” Ukrainian Armed Forces, who are in fact are blood-thirsty criminals who do not hesitate to kill their own compatriots in cold blood.
We hope that all those in the world who have the courage of embracing the truth better understand now why a mere ceasefire that we hear about more intensively recently will not be a solution to the Ukrainian crisis. Russia will be insisting that all root causes of the conflict are addressed and eradicated so that such evil and impunity with total disregard to human life dignity will never happen again at our borders.
We would to thank you for participating in this meeting.
