Ukraine: 'International community’s incapacity to stop this senseless war'-Security Council Briefing

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United Nations has verified the killing of 5,718 civilians, including 372 children, but the actual numbers are likely significantly higher, the UN Political Affairs chief told the Security Council. Briefing the Council today (7 Sep), the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary A. DiCarlo, said that “all these numbers and facts, though shocking, cannot convey the full scale of the tragedy.” DiCarlo noted, though, that “in the face of the international community’s incapacity to stop this senseless war, we must continue to record its horrific consequences as faithfully and accurately as possible.” “It is our responsibility, and indeed the very least we can do - to help prevent the war from escalating further and to deter other potential violent conflicts”, she continued. Appealing for peace “founded on respect for the UN Charter and international law”, DiCarlo also said that “all wars are tragic, but none more than wars of choice.” The UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands Kehris, informed that some 7 million people are internally displaced in Ukraine, and millions more have sought refuge outside of the country. According to Kehris, “intense hostilities, including large-scale destruction of critical civilian infrastructure and housing, has forced many people to flee their homes” and “human rights violations in territory occupied by the Russian Federation, or controlled by affiliated armed groups, have also caused people to flee.” The Assistant Secretary-General also highlighted “credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself.” According to her, the UN is “concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care, and that these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families.” Kehris also briefed about Council members about a process called ‘filtration’, a system of security checks and personal data collection conducted by the Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups, that her office has verified. Individuals subjected to ‘filtration’ include those leaving areas of ongoing or recent hostilities, and those residing in or moving through territory controlled by Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups. According to Kehris, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented that men and women perceived as having ties with Ukrainian armed forces or state institutions, or as having pro-Ukrainian or anti-Russian views, were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance. She continued, “they were transferred to penal colonies, including the now infamous penal colony near Olenivka, and pre-trial detention centers, where they were interrogated and sometimes tortured to extract a so-called ‘confession’ of their active cooperation with the Government of Ukraine.” Vasily Nebenzya, the Permanent Representative to the United Nations of the Russian Federation, said that today’s meeting, which was convened under the request of the United States and Albania, had “every chance of becoming a new milestone on the disinformation campaign unleashed by Ukraine and its western backers against our country.” The west tactic, Nebenzya continued, is to wage “a hybrid war in Ukraine, down to the last Ukrainian”. He also said, “the dirty methods of western propagandists are also very familiar to us.” Khrystyna Hayovyshyn, the Deputy Permanent Representative from Ukraine, told Council members that “as a part of its aggression Russia continues forcible deportation of Ukrainian citizens to its territory.” “Our people are being transferred to isolated and depressed regions of Siberia and the Far East”, Hayovyshyn said. According to her, “the scale of this crime is outrageous –according to available data, nearly 2.5 million Ukrainians, including about 38thousand children, have been transferred from southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.” Before the meeting, the US Permanent Representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, spoke to the journalists at the Security Council. The ambassador said the United States has “evidence that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens – including children – have been interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported, and some of them sent to very remote areas as you can see here.” Pointing to a graphic, she said that “the experience is different for everyone, depending on how threatening they are perceived to be toward Russia’s invasion.” “Some are allowed to remain in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Some are forcefully deported to Russia. And some are sent to prisons. And some simply vanish”, Thomas-Greenfield concluded. Credit UN Photo/Loey Felipe