UNITED NATIONS, June 25. /TASS/. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a tool used by the West to stage a contracted litigation against Russia over the situation in Ukraine, Sergey Leonidchenko, a senior adviser to Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Friday.

"Over the 20 years of its existence, this body has demonstrated its utter inability to ensure unbiased and independent justice. It has turned into an instrument of political pressure on unwanted states and governments," he said at an Arria-formula of the United Nations Security Council meeting.

"The West is openly paying for a contracted trial at the ICC, with the guilty party being appointed well in advance," he said, "The fact that entire teams of national court experts have been commissioned to the ICC to help it record Russia’s alleged crimes is serving the same goal. So, it looks like the ICC is just a smoke screen used by the collective West to organize its disgraceful trial for our country behind."

He recalled that a joint investigative team has been set up. "This team includes Ukraine, which is known for its utter disregard for international humanitarian law, including tortures and killing of prisoners of war, years of deliberate shelling, bombardments and other attacks at civilian facilities," the Russian diplomat noted. "The team also includes Western countries, which are supplying the Kiev regime with weapons, including long-range artillery and multiple launch systems, as well as cluster munitions they were supposed to completely destroy as they pathetically declared. These gifts continue to kill civilians in Donbass."

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country. After that, the United States and its allies imposed large-scale sanctions on Russia and increased weapons supplies to Kiev.