Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Arria-Formula Meeting on Systematic Violations of IHL by Ukraine in Russia
Opening remarks:
Dear colleagues,
We welcome you all to our Arria-formula meeting dedicated to the systematic violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the territory of the Russian Federation. It is a follow-up of the discussion on the similar topic that we organized two months ago on 13 August. You can find the video recording of that meeting via QR-code that you have in front of you on your tables and on your screens.
The previous meeting was held literally one week after the beginning of the Kiev regime’s invasion into the Kursk region of the Russian Federation and even at that point we already had quite extensive evidence of the crimes of the Ukrainian forces against civilians to share with you. Now, two months later a lot has changed. As was predicted, this proved nothing more than an ill-fated and ill-calculated strategic blunder by the expired Ukrainian president and his henchmen who hoped to use conquered territories, including the Kursk NPP, as a bargaining chip in eventual peace negotiations and divert the Russian army reserves from Donbass. But these hopes were very quickly dashed. After initial very modest territorial gains achieved at an unfathomably high price, the Ukrainian forces started rapidly losing their positions on the battlefield. Now it’s clear that they have failed to achieve any of these goals. The AFU are being consistently squeezed out of the Russian territory, since the Kursk incursion the Russian Armed Forces have made unprecedented advances on the Eastern and Southern fronts and took control of a number of crucial heavily fortified positions which represented key strongholds of the Ukrainian army since 2014. And this fatal trend for the Kiev regime is only gaining momentum while priceless reserves and Western military equipment are being squandered in the swathe of territory still being under Zelensky’s control in Kursk.
Well, maybe historians will later give their view on Zelensky’s adventure in Kursk and its role in accelerating the collapse of the criminal Kiev regime. Our aim today is to expose what the Ukrainian nationalists are doing to peaceful Russian cities in the Kursk region and beyond and their inhabitants thus clearly demonstrating their evil terrorist nature.
Since the beginning of the brutal war against peaceful regions of Donbass in 2014 we register systematic atrocities and mass grave violations of norms and principles of IHL that have already become a hallmark of Kiev’s military strategy. The incursion into the Kursk region by the neo-Nazi regime on August 6 is no exception and was accompanied by immense suffering of the civilian population, including women, children, and the elderly.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces on a regular basis strike peaceful densely populated areas near the frontline that do not have any military objects, such as Belgorod, with artillery and ballistic missiles and try to launch long-range drone attacks into the Russian territory. In clear violation of IHL Kiev’s military routinely and deliberately attack civilians, use apartments, schools and kindergartens as firing positions, deploy and use heavy weapons, including artillery and air defense systems, from residential areas thus using local civilians as “human shields”.
Representatives of certain countries do a lot of talking about the importance of ensuring the security of nuclear facilities, while accusing us contrary to any common sense of destabilizing the security situation around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant which is under our control. At the same time they do their best to ignore the obvious fact that regular and reckless attacks against the ZNPP are a deliberate terrorist strategy of Ukraine.
But recent events undermine the arguments of all those who try to shelter the Armed Forces of Ukraine in case of the ZNPP. There is irrefutable evidence that Kiev was also plotting to attack the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Kursk, thus triggering a genuine man-made disaster and a large-scale technogenic catastrophe in Europe. Fortunately, the Russian Armed Forces stopped Ukrainian troops well ahead of the facility which is just 90 km from the border. According to intelligence we have at our disposals, the planned terrorist attack included capturing and mining of the Kursk NPP. We also have credible information that Western intelligence agencies, primarily the British MI6, have systematically prepared Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups to organize provocations at nuclear power plants in Russia. In particular they were working on an operation to blow up power lines connecting nuclear power plants with the Russian national energy grid.
These truly insane plans are beyond reckless. Had Ukrainian troops been able to carry it out, this would have plunged our continent into a radiation nightmare comparable to Chernobyl. Kiev junta’s actions do not just pose a direct threat to the nuclear power plant’s security but also go against the principles of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) formulated by its head, Rafael Grossi in 2022. We repeatedly stated that the entire international community should understand the threat posed by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime to the European continent. We call on the international bodies, the UN and the IAEA in particular, to unconditionally condemn the provocative actions of the Kiev regime and to prevent the violation of both nuclear safety and security of the ZNPP and Kursk NPP.
Let the participants of the incursion themselves tell us about this blatant provocation. In the following video you’ll hear confessions of an Ukrainian POW from Ukraine’s elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade. This man has admitted that their Commander-in-Chief A.Syrsky tasked them with blowing up Kursk NPP and thus committing an act of nuclear terrorism. Of course, all of it was planned with the help of NATO specialists as Ukrainian military just don’t have neither the necessary capacities and means nor intelligence to prepare and carry out such operations themselves.
Another POW shown in the video who was clearly released from prison before being mobilized to the AFU claims that he was told that the Ukrainian military would be given a free rein to take whatever they want, to rob, to rape, to steal, to kill – and I’d like to quote this man – “to do things we’re best at”. Let’s watch the video.
[Video 1 – testimonies of Ukrainian POWs]
We often hear from a number of Western countries about Kiev’s inherent right to self-defense according to Article 51 of the UN Charter. Let me appeal to all those who participate in this meeting - let those of you who really believe that these actions can be qualified as self-defense raise their hands and clarify their point of view.
Colleagues, I see no hands raised.
So, as we all clearly see, the neo-Nazi Kiev regime has sent its thugs to rob and kill peaceful Russian citizens. These criminals are committing barbaric atrocities on our territory in flagrant violation of IHL, killing civilians with particular cruelty. They are the real terrorists. This is confirmed by numerous photo and video evidence, some of which we will show you in a few seconds.
Now you’ll see a woman rescued from the border areas of the Kursk region talking about the human tragedies she witnessed firsthand in the very beginning of the Ukrainian reckless offensive. She and her sick mother, a patient of the Sudzha city hospital, found themselves in the midst of the fierce Ukrainian onslaught. The medical facility was subjected to deliberate massive shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. These women saw people screaming and then dying in pain. Wounded civilians were brought to the hospital, many of them could no longer be helped. Among the killed were the elderly, children and women, one of whom was pregnant. Ambulance workers who were helping the wounded were also deliberately targeted and killed. In the second part of the video clip residents of a city near Kursk talk about artillery that AFU soldiers used against the civilians in residential areas.
[Video 2 – testimonies of eyewitnesses to the shelling of Sudzha hospital and residential areas]
The Ukrainians and their foreign accomplices were well aware of the fact that it was nobody else but peaceful local residents whom they were targeting and killing. They shot civilians in cold blood and on purpose. This fact alone tells you everything you need to know about the terrorist nature of the current Kiev regime and its sponsors that had sent these maneaters to our land.
I’d like to show a clip in which a local villager recounts a horrific incident when Ukrainian soldiers raped woman and then killed her after having learned that her son is a Russian serviceman. The last part of this video clip was filmed by Ukrainian soldiers themselves (presumably around August 11 in the village of Zaoleshenka) in the Sudzhansky district in the Kursk region. You can see how troops in Nazi-style helmets harass an elderly Russian villager. The pensioner says that he is 74 years old and laments that he has been lost for five days. Instead of helping him, the soldiers address the Russian man the “Russian Ivan” and start berating him in German, stating that “all Russians are pigs”. There were a lot of other obscenities but we cut it out.
[Video 3 – eyewitness accounts of AFU crimes]
You’ve probably heard claims from representatives of the Kiev regime that in the territories of the Russian Federation the Ukrainian military commandment allegedly acts friendly to the civilian population and provides it with humanitarian aid and all necessary services. Now you may imagine what this looks like in reality.
As we’ve said during our latest Arria-formula meeting, foreign mercenaries attacked the Kursk land as an important part of the enemy troops. They were committing outrageous atrocities against civilians in the occupied areas, brutally killing everyone – women, children and old people. According to eyewitnesses, Poles and Georgians were particularly cruel. The following clip proves the fact that there is a large-scale presence of Western mercenaries within the Ukrainian Armed Forces engaged in the incursion.
[Video 4 – eyewitness accounts on the presence of mercenaries]
There are hundreds of hours of such video materials and hundreds of witnesses who would confirm these facts which make your blood run cold. One of such witnesses will later speak during our meeting. All these data is being collected and will be used to ensure accountability to the Ukrainian criminals and mercenaries. No one will escape justice.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that all materials presented today by the briefers and our mission are available via the QR-code that you now see on the screen.