GENEVA, October 4. /TASS/. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s envoy to the UN office in Geneva, on Tuesday said the West and international human rights groups deliberately underestimate the use of antipersonnel mines against civilians in Donbass by Ukrainian forces.
He made the statement in a speech at a roundtable discussion that’s part of the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Gatilov said the Ukrainian troops had been using these mines against their "former fellow countrymen" for a few months, dropping the mines in the courtyards of apartment buildings, at markets and other "purely civilian places."
"There’s only one explanation for this: revenge on the residents of these now Russian regions for their choice, for their unwillingness to stay under the yoke of the Nazi government in Kiev," the Russian diplomat said.
"Unfortunately, this issue is deliberately and criminally hushed up by the so-called collective West and international human rights mechanisms. You won’t hear about these crimes by the Ukrainian government and the military in the speeches of Europeans, Americans and their satellites, including at the UN Human Rights Council, or from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or from the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine," he went on to say.
Gatilov said the actions of the Kiev troops "without an exaggeration can be qualified as war crimes and crimes against humanity."
He said that the Permanent Mission of Russia in Geneva has repeatedly brought to the attention of the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and the office that she headed, to the HRC and the relevant UN human rights mechanisms the "detailed evidence of crimes by Ukrainian armed formations and nationalist battalions against the civilian population." However, international mechanisms "remain deaf," he said. The diplomat said "in the conditions of unacceptable silence on the part of international human rights organizations, Western political quarters and the so-called independent media," Russia considers it all the more important to draw attention "to the suffering of the residents of Donbass and the criminal actions of Kiev" using the HRC platform.
The roundtable discussion dedicated to the use of antipersonnel mines by the Kiev regime against the civilian population of Donbass was organized by the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation together with the Information Group on Crimes against the Person, the Verum Public Project and the Foundation for the Support of Jewish Culture, Science and Education.