Speaking directly to the Security Council for the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine on Tuesday 5 April, Volodymyr Zelensky demanded that Russian war crimes be recognized by the international community, and that Russia not can use its veto on issues relating to this war of which it is the aggressor – while suggesting that, without a radical reform of the maintenance of global security, the United Nations would no longer be relevant.
By videoconference, looking somber, the Ukrainian president immediately got to the heart of the matter – when numerous corpses were discovered in Boutcha, near kyiv, last weekend. He assured diplomats that civilians have been tortured, found shot in the back of the head, thrown into wells, blown up by grenades thrown into their apartments, run over in their cars by tanks.
” They cut limbs, throats, tongues. Women have been gang-raped in front of their children, detailed Volodymyr Zelensky to the diplomats. Boutcha is just one example among many – the world has yet to discover the horrible truth. »
For the Ukrainian President, it is essential to establish Russia’s responsibility as quickly as possible: he has called for an independent international investigation, that the principals and the performers be “immediately brought to justice for war crimes”and that a Nuremberg-type trial, which had been brought against the 24 main leaders of Nazi Germany, be organized.
After watching videos of brutalized, emaciated, charred bodies, the Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia affirmed that under Russian occupation, “no one from Boutcha had suffered violent action”. And resumed the line of the Kremlin struck for a few days: these images would be a ” handling “ on the part of kyiv, the exactions and looting, committed by “Ukrainian extremists”.
Russian “filtration camps”
Second cold spell on the Council, when the American representative mentioned “filtration camps” in Russia, where tens of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, were reportedly forcibly taken. “Reports indicate that Russian federal security agents confiscate their passports and identity cards, mobile phones, and separate families, detailed Linda Thomas-Greefield. I don’t need to say what these so-called “filtration camps” remind us of. It’s chilling. We cannot ignore it. »
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