MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/. The West cannot substantiate the groundless accusations about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at an online briefing on Friday.
"We want everything to be fair, all discussions to be based on facts, and the facts on the basis of which Russia is accused have not been presented to us," he said, "Speaking generally about the issue of war crimes, accusations of violations of international humanitarian law, there are very few facts that our Western colleagues could present to us. We ask them to substantiate their statements with concrete information and evidence, but this hardly ever happens."
The top Russian diplomat pointed to the biased and prejudiced position of all kinds of "independent" commissions of inquiry created "through abuse of procedures and abuse of consensus" in various international organizations, including the UN.
"They travel, talk to representatives of the Ukrainian regime, get some information from them and basically form their conclusions on this basis," Lavrov said, "They do not communicate with those who live on our side of the line of engagement, just as the UN did not come to Donbass for eight long years when we were still trying to enforce the Minsk agreements. They receive the information for such conclusions from the most interested party, in this case from Kiev and its Western sponsors, including numerous non-governmental organizations financed by the Americans and their allies, which use their pseudo-independence to promote the ideas the West wants to put forward."
Meanwhile, according to the minister, there is plenty of evidence on the Internet and social networks of atrocities and violations of every possible law of war and international humanitarian law committed by Ukrainian fighters, which the neo-Nazis record on video and post for everyone to see. But these "deeds," he added, "for some reason remain unnoticed by the UN Secretariat."
Speaking about the activities of the parliamentary commission created in Russia to investigate the crimes against children in Kiev, Lavrov pointed out: "We are interested in ensuring that everything here is fair and just, so the parliamentary commission will, of course, set itself the task of gaining access to real facts in order to analyze these facts, summarize and present them to the public."