NEW YORK: In an informal ‘Arria Formula’ with the members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Russian diplomats presented evidence of unlawful acts committed by the Ukrainian military and nationalist groups, claiming it hindered the process of evacuation of people.
This comes after the permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said that the Ukrainian authorities and their Western sponsors were doing their utmost to prevent this sad truth from coming to the spotlight.
“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 stressed.
Blaming the Ukrainian army for deploying heavy weapons in residential areas and using civilians as a human shield, Nebenzya asked his foreign counterparts to pay due attention to the fact.
Discussing the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russian diplomats showed video interviews of Ukrainian civilians who had managed to escape from the zone of hostilities.
Many testified the Ukrainian army had opened fire on the cars of those trying to use humanitarian corridors for evacuation.
Some journalists showed their reports and interviews with people in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, showcasing how Ukrainian soldiers and members of the Azov battalion had shelled homes, jeopardized the lives of civilians
In a statement to Tass, Italian journalist and documentarist Giorgio Bianchi said disinformation and propaganda merely delayed conflict settlement.
“I am a European. I do not wish to see fake news spread about Europe,” he added.
There is a big difference between one’s perception of events from safe places hundreds of kilometers away from the site of the conflict and what was really happening on the ground, reported Tass, quoting Salyam Adil, Chief of the Lebanese TV broadcaster Al Mayadeen’s bureau in Moscow.
The situation was too dramatic to tolerate any attempts at spreading allegations that have nothing to do with the reality, he stressed further.
The war in Ukraine which has entered its third month now has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with more than 5 million Ukrainian fleeing to neighbouring Western countries, according to the UNHCR data.
The war has also resulted in almost 3000 civilian casualties as of April 28, casualty figures including as many as 70 children. (ANI)
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