UNITED NATIONS, October 18. /TASS/. Moscow’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has sent an official note to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, demanding he publicly condemn deliberate attacks on Russian journalists, the mission said in a statement.
Earlier, a Ukrainian drone strike killed Ivan Zuyev, a war reporter for the Rossiya Segodnya media outlet, and left his colleague Yury Voitkevich severely wounded.
The Russian mission slammed the reaction of the UN chief’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who commented on the tragedy in general terms. "Such a statement, which distracts from the main point of what happened, can only be regarded as an attempt to smooth out the fact of deliberate attack on journalists by Kiev’s militants," the Russian diplomats pointed out.
In this regard, Moscow urged the UN secretary general "to make a clear assessment of what happened and publicly condemn deliberate attacks on Russian journalists and take measures to prevent such incidents in the future." The mission stressed that the lack of direct condemnation undermined trust in the UN Secretariat’s ability to take a firm stand on protecting freedom of speech.
Russia expects that the United Nations and other international institutions "will show professional responsibility, fully implement their mandates and give an unbiased assessment of what happened."