GENEVA (AP) –UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech at the UN-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva that the Russian aggression had “caused widespread death, destruction and displacement”.
After Russia’s failure to capture Kiev in the first weeks of its February 24 invasion last year and a series of humiliating setbacks in the fall, Russia stabilized its fronts and Moscow illegally annexed it in September. It is concentrating its efforts on occupying the four provinces Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia. Ukraine, on the other hand, hopes to launch new counteroffensives and regain more of its occupied territories, using major tanks and other new weapons promised by the West. advertisement
“The attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused heavy casualties and great suffering,” Guterres said.
Fierce fighting for territory in eastern Ukraine was the focus of Sunday at a Ukrainian field hospital treating wounded wounded in a fierce battle over the devastated city of Bakhmut.Battered and exhausted soldiers on stretchers. Here we come.
Meanwhile, Belarusian opposition activists claimed that a military airfield outside the Belarusian capital housing Russian fighter jets was attacked by Belarusian guerrillas.
A year ago, Russia used the territory of its ally Belarus to invade Ukraine. Belarus continues to have Russian troops, fighter jets and other weapons. Speaking in Geneva, Mr. Guterres cited cases of sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and violations of prisoner rights documented by the United Nations Office for Human Rights.
He criticized the now 75-year-old Universal Declaration of Human Rights as “misused and too often misused.”
Dozens of high-ranking envoys (many of them from the West) who attended the Geneva Conference attacked Russia over its acts of war. President Putin said at a concurrent conference on disarmament, another US-backed agency, that delegations would suspend Russia’s participation in the New START Agreement with the US, the last nuclear arms control deal between Moscow and Washington.
Russia was not represented on the council, and Russia’s top envoy at the session was not scheduled to speak until Thursday.
But Russian officials have given little indication that they may reconsider attacking the neighboring country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday:
“Currently, I see no conditions for a peaceful settlement.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, chaired by President Vladimir Putin, has gone a step further, calling the specter of nuclear war and the nightmare of Europe’s biggest and worst conflict since World War II.
Zhdanov said the Ukrainian army is now building up forces for a future counteroffensive in the south, attacking Russian positions and supply depots.
“Ukraine has significantly stepped up its artillery fire on Russian positions in the south, destroying roads and depots, key prerequisites for a successful counterattack in the future,” he said.
In other deployments, Russian forces claimed that Russian forces attacked an electronic information center near Brovary, east of Kiev.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said Russian forces had attacked a Ukrainian military special operations center near the western city of Khmelnytsky. The ministry did not disclose when the strike began, and its claims have not been independently verified.
