MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. The United Nations is being hypocritical and politicizing humanitarian matters when it comes to Russia’s new territories, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

"The Russian side once again points to double standards and open politicization of humanitarian issues. Under the guise of concern for civilians, it is fulfilling its political contract with Western capitals," it said, commenting on the statement by UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown on assistance to Russian-controlled areas, including those affected following the collapse of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant.

The ministry demanded explanations concerning Brown’s accusations that Russia is denying access to the affected territories. "The lofty statements by UN representatives about them striving to help those in need haven’t led to any concrete efforts or results," despite Russia’s calls since February 2022 for continuing international humanitarian assistance from the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to civilians in Donbass who have for years been living under shelling attacks and in total isolation because of the Kiev regime, the ministry stressed.

"The organization’s leadership has never considered and is not considering any options of delivering assistance to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions other than from Kiev and across the combat engagement line," it said. "These rigid stances are based not on humanitarian but on political considerations, with the suffering of the people being ignored. It looks like the only goal is to demonstrate Kiev’s control over those territories that it has not represented for years."

Russia, according to the ministry, "has been drawing UN representatives’ attention to the absence of security conditions amid the active hostilities, the high risk of acts of sabotage and provocation, the abundance of mines, which makes moving across the combat engagement line impossible." Moscow has repeatedly called for looking at the option of delivering aid from mainland Russia along regular routes that have been used to deliver goods to Donbass, but "these proposals were turned down by the UN at the behest of Kiev and its Western sponsors," it said.

The ministry stressed that after the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions joined Russia, their legal status changed but the United Nations ignored these changes and the will of the people living in these regions, "seeking to push through the unacceptable option of access from Kiev as though these territories are still part of Ukraine."

"We would have hailed the UN leadership’s principled stance on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity but for their literally daily infringement upon these very principles in other countries," the ministry said, recalling the situation in Syria where since 2014 the UN Secretariat, in violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, has been serving the cross-border assistance mechanism to the terrorist enclave in Idlib without coordinating it with Damascus and thus violating Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.