Speaking at an informal “Arria formula” meeting of the UN Security Council on May 6, Russia’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia and his deputy Ambassador Dmity Polyanskiy were able to present evidence of war crimes committed by the Ukrainian army and militia.
Nebenzia pointed to the fact that the Ukrainian army and militias repeatedly deployed heavy weapons to residential areas and used civilians as a human shield, which is a violation of international humanitarian law. “We have enough reasons to believe that all these principles are systematically violated by the Ukrainian army and paramilitaries. There are many eyewitness accounts of how the Ukrainian army uses civilians as hostages and a human shield,” he said. (https://russiaun.ru/en/news/arria_060522)
Nebenzia showed video interviews of Ukrainian civilians who had managed to escape from the zone of hostilities, who said the Ukrainian army had opened fire on the cars of those trying to use humanitarian corridors to escape, others emphatically dismissed the rumors the Russian army was responsible for the explosion inside Mariupol’s theater.
There were also journalists who gave testimony, including the Italian photojournalist and filmmaker Giorgio Bianchi, who said, “I am a European. I do not wish to see fake news spread about Europe,” such as the allegations of a Russian strike against the theater in Mariupol.
Bulgarian journalist Asya Zuan, editor-in-chief of the News Front news agency, said she had been able to see for herself the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics never wished the crisis in Ukraine to grow into war. She urged the authorities of her country to stop doing anything that might cause the conflict to escalate.
The chief of the Lebanese TV broadcaster Al Mayadeen’s bureau in Moscow, Salam Al-Obaidy (Salem Abdel-Munem), stressed that the situation was too dramatic to tolerate any attempts at spreading allegations that have nothing to do with reality.
Some journalists showed interviews with people in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, and the city of Mariupol who told how the Ukrainian soldiers and members of the Azov Battalion had shelled homes, jeopardized the lives of civilians and deployed weapons in residential areas.
Polyanskiy compared the video that Reuters showed of a Russian-speaking Ukrainian woman who had worked at the Azovstal plant, in which she talks about how fearful she was of the bombing, implying it was Russian bombing. Then he showed the unedited video of the woman saying Ukraine was no longer a country to her, it had abandoned the people to being held hostage, and that she would live in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
In another video, Polyanskiy showed Ukrainian troops explaining why they take no POWs, with one laughing by way of explanation: “We don’t have barracks for you [Russians]. We have cemeteries.”
Nebenzia concluded: “Today we are not speaking on our own behalf. We are just giving the floor to people who have experienced what was happening there, on the frontline, to let them explain how they survived and who really committed atrocities there. Every single word you are hearing is theirs, not ours. If you do not want to listen to them, it is a different matter. If staying silent makes you feel more comfortable—it’s your choice. But the purpose of today’s event is to give a say to those who can testify, and not to spread propaganda,” Nebenzia told those representatives of the Western countries who tried to argue that Russia was spreading disinformation.
