NEW YORK — Russian and Western diplomats clashed Thursday over alleged war crimes in Ukraine during a heated meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian towns of Izyum and Bucha revealed gruesome torture and killings of Ukrainian civilians that cannot be dismissed as the actions of a few bad actors.
“Wherever the Russian tide recedes, we discover the horror it has left in its wake,” Blinken said. “We cannot, we will not allow President Putin to get away with it.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied the charges and accused Ukrainian forces of killing civilians in the eastern Donbas region with “impunity”.
He blamed the United States, France and Germany for failing to hold Ukraine accountable for the alleged atrocities.
“The Kyiv regime owes its impunity to its Western sponsors,” he said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba seized on Lavrov’s remarks, saying his comments make him complicit in crimes in Ukraine.
“Russian diplomats are directly complicit because their lies incite these crimes and cover them up,” he said.
The meeting marked only the second time Blinken and Lavrov have been in the same room since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow’s decision to attend the meeting surprised some US officials who had expected Russia to back down from an issue designed to expose and condemn its plans to hold referendums and annex territory occupied in Ukraine.
In singling out Russia at fault, Blinken joined top diplomats from countries including France, Britain, Norway, Albania and Ireland, as well as UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who accused the Kremlin of violating international law .
The meeting was attended by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, who said his team will be deployed to Ukraine in the coming days to investigate allegations in the east of the country, where residents of the occupied territory Russia has previously accused Russian forces of torture, enforced disappearances and rape.
Without explicitly blaming Russia, Khan made it clear that the atrocities he has investigated during visits to war-torn areas of Ukraine, such as the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and the northeastern city of Kharkiv, were real and shocking. .
“The bodies I saw were not fake,” he said.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Russia had committed “unspeakable crimes” and officials who committed, ordered or planned them must be held accountable.
Guterres called Moscow’s plan to hold referendums to join Russia in occupied areas of Ukraine a “violation of the UN charter and international law and precedents.”
The world’s top diplomat also blamed Russian bombing of urban areas for killing thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including hundreds of children.
“Almost every child in Ukraine has been scarred by the nightmare of war,” he said.
Lavrov entered the Security Council chamber just before his speech. After condemning the West’s support for Ukraine, he left the room.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged restraint on both sides and stressed the importance of the United Nations remaining impartial in the conflict.
India’s top diplomat, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, also avoided blaming Russia or Ukraine, and simply endorsed the war crimes investigations.
Allusion to Belarus, a close ally of Russia Kremlin pre-war declarations, that the West’s stance on Ukraine’s possible NATO membership and Kyiv’s efforts to align more closely with the West posed a threat to the region’s security balance.
“The tragic result of this arrogant position [is what] see you today in ukraine. We have always repeated that you cannot ensure the security of one state by suppressing the security of another,” said Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei. “No one took this seriously. Today we are reaping the harvest of that.”
The statements during the Security Council session came with world leaders in New York for the annual high-level meetings of the United Nations. A theme that many leaders, including President Biden, raised during their remarks at the world body’s General Assembly was the desire to maintain unity among nations that have taken extraordinary since February to support Ukraine, providing weapons, imposing sanctions and reducing its dependence on Russian energy.
Eastern European leaders, on the front lines of the Russia-NATO standoff, echoed US hopes that the pro-Ukraine coalition remain together despite the growing tensions they are expected to face in the coming months, when energy and other commodity prices are high probably will increasingly affect the populations of these countries.
Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova said her country, which borders Ukraine, would continue military aid to Kyiv, which could now include MiG fighter jets. this Poland and the Czech Republic have agreed to monitor Slovak skies. But he acknowledged that some Slovaks just want an end to the conflict, regardless of who prevails.
“Is in our own interest to continue to patiently explain to our population that supporting Ukraine is not just some kind of charity,” he said in an interview through a translator. “It is in the national interest that Ukraine defends itself and wins this war”.
Support for Ukraine remains strong in Estonia, which borders Russia, the country’s foreign minister, Urmas Reinsalu, said.
“Cowardice and courage fight within every nation,” Reinsalu said in an interview. “Will our resolve be stronger?”
Estonia is among nations calling for stronger economic measures targeting Russia’s economy, including a far-reaching trade embargo and a cut-off of Russia’s banking sector from the rest of the world, to cut off revenue for the Kremlin.
Unlike countries in other parts of Europe, Reinsalu said, Ukrainians have no choice but to continue their fight against Russia. He said that Moscow, perhaps inadvertently, had made the stakes of the conflict very clear to Ukrainians.
“They know that their alternative, if they surrender or compromise, means that the whole country will become Buchas,” he said.