MOSCOW, November 29. /TASS/. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s claim the situations in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine are different and cannot be compared creates a false narrative, Konstantin Kosachev, the deputy speaker of the Federation Council (upper house of the Russian parliament) has said.
"It is axiomatic: military actions shall be conducted according to the rules. When Stoltenberg says that it is impossible to compare these situations, a false narrative is created in the sense that people in one conflict are different from people in another conflict from the standpoint of the value of human life and the scope of rights and opportunities for legal protection. As if some people have rights and others are simply expendable material," Kosachev wrote in his Telegram channel.
He is certain that such a message has nothing to do with international law, "but fits in well with the NATO concept of 'rule-based order'." Kosachev recalled that, according to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, international humanitarian law begins to apply from the moment first shot has been fired and ends after the general end of hostilities.
"In this regard, Stoltenberg is obviously wrong when he says that the situation in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip cannot be compared from the point of view of international law. It is possible and even necessary to compare them," Kosachev stressed.
He recalled that "NATO members have been stubbornly silent about Ukraine for years since the 2014 coup, when the civil war started in that country with the monstrous bombardments of the civilian population of the southeast by the Ukrainian military."
"That’s a direct analogy with today's Palestine, by the way," Kosachev remarked.
"And even now, at the recent virtual G20 summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in response to statements by representatives of the Western countries who said they were 'shocked by Russia's actions in Ukraine and the deaths of civilians,' rightly wondered why the world leaders are not shocked by the deaths of Palestinian children, why they are not shocked to see the Gaza Strip turn into a large children's cemetery, and why they are not shocked to see children being operated on without anesthesia?" Kosachev continued.
He also cited Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.".