United Nations chief Antonio Guterres mentioned Monday that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered “the most massive violations of human rights” on the planet right this moment.
The U.N. secretary-general made the feedback on the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva, because the battle pushed into its second 12 months with no sign of ending and tens of 1000’s lifeless.
The Russian invasion “has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement,” Guterres mentioned.
After failing to seize Kyiv within the opening weeks of the invasion on Feb. 24 final 12 months and struggling a sequence of humiliating setbacks through the fall, Russia has stabilized the entrance and is concentrating its efforts on capturing 4 provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine, in the meantime, hopes to make use of battle tanks and different new weapons pledged by the West to launch new counteroffensives and reclaim extra of the occupied territory.
Guterres mentioned “attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties and terrible suffering.”
The intense preventing for territory in jap Ukraine was in sharp focus Sunday at a Ukrainian subject hospital treating wounded from the extraordinary battle for town of Bakhmut, which is devastated. A continuing stream of battered and exhausted troopers got here in on stretchers.
Anatoliy, the chief of the medical service, mentioned his staff treats dozens of troopers day by day and barely has time to eat.
“My medics work practically non-stop. Before the full-scale invasion, we had 50-60 wounded in a nine-month rotation, and now sometimes we have more (than that) in one day,” he instructed The Associated Press. He supplied just one identify for safety causes.
Guterres’ remarks got here because the Ukrainian army mentioned that Russia launched assaults with exploding drones on a number of areas of the nation that lasted from late Sunday till Monday morning, killing two.
Rights violations
Guterres cited circumstances of sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and violations of the rights of prisoners of battle documented by the U.N. human rights workplace.
He decried how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now 75 years outdated, has been “too often misused and abused.”
“It is exploited for political gain and it is ignored, often, by the very same people,” Guterres mentioned. “Some governments chip away at it. Others use a wrecking ball.”
“This is a moment to stand on the right side of history,” he instructed the council, the U.N.’s high human rights physique. Russia withdrew from its seat final 12 months amid a surge in worldwide stress over the battle in Ukraine.
Dozens of high-level envoys on the Geneva assembly – many from Western nations – lashed out at Russia over its conduct of the battle.
At the simultaneous Conference on Disarmament, one other U.N.-backed physique, delegates rebuked Putin’s determination to droop Russia’s participation within the New START settlement with the United States, the final nuclear arms management settlement between Moscow and Washington.
Russian officers have proven little signal they could be reconsidering their assault on their neighbor, nonetheless.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned Monday, “We aren’t seeing any conditions for a peaceful settlement now.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council that’s chaired by President Vladimir Putin, went a step additional, as soon as once more elevating the specter of nuclear battle and a nightmare consequence to Europe’s largest and deadliest battle since World War II.
‘Russia’s existential danger’
He chided the U.S. and its allies for offering Ukraine with army and different help to assist push again the Kremlin’s forces. Their longer-term goal, he claimed, is to interrupt up Russia.
“They have crazy illusions that after finishing off the Soviet Union without a single shot they could bury today’s Russia without any significant problems for themselves simply by disposing of thousands of lives in the conflict,” he mentioned.
“It’s a very dangerous mistake, it won’t work like it did with the Soviet Union.”
Putin has additionally framed the battle in these phrases, saying it is an existential danger to Russia.
In the Sunday-Monday assaults, Ukraine’s General Staff mentioned Kyiv’s forces shot down 11 out of 14 Iranian-made Shahed drones.
Ukraine’s presidential workplace mentioned Monday that a minimum of two civilians had been killed and 9 others had been wounded by Russian assaults over the earlier 24 hours.
It mentioned that intense preventing has continued round Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar within the Donetsk area, which have come beneath relentless Russian shelling.
Ukrainian army analyst Oleh Zhdanov mentioned the Russian offensive aimed toward securing management of jap Ukraine has successfully grow to be slowed down whereas shedding “huge numbers of weapons and ammunition.”
Zhdanov mentioned the Ukrainian army, in flip, is build up forces for a future counteroffensive within the south whereas pummeling Russian positions and depots there.
“Ukraine has significantly intensified the shelling of Russian positions in the south, destroying roads and depots, which is an important condition for the success of a future counteroffensive,” he mentioned.
In different developments, the Russian army claimed its forces struck an digital intelligence middle close to Brovary, simply east of Kyiv.
Russia’s Defense Ministry additionally mentioned that Russian forces struck a particular operations middle of the Ukrainian armed forces close to the western metropolis of Khmelnytskyi.
The ministry didn’t say when the strikes had been launched, and its declare couldn’t be independently verified.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
