The UN Human Rights Council, having thrown Russia out, voted up on May 5 a resolution to set up an investigation into possible war crimes by Russian troops in Ukraine. Areas that were under Russian occupation in late February and March “have experienced the most gruesome human rights violations on the European continent in decades,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar told the Council.
At the same session on May 12, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said there were many examples of possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Reuters reported. “The scale of unlawful killings, including indicia of summary executions in areas to the north of Kyiv, is shocking,” she said, as quoted by Reuters.
Gennady Gatilov, the Russian envoy to UN organizations in Vienna, responded that Russia cannot trust the results of such an investigation. “I should say that we have heard nothing objective and nothing substantive from the UN legal procedures, from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bachelet over these years,” he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel. “The newly established commission of inquiry will obviously be seeking to present the situation in a way to blame Russia for everything. That is why, we are refusing to speak and cooperate with it because the result of such inquiries is clear for us.”
