MOSCOW, March 08, /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin called for a thorough investigation of the events that led to the overthrow of the president and government in Ukraine, including the use of snipers.
Churkin said he had raised this question at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council and brought to this colleagues’ attention the transcript of the phone call between Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, who had discussed the events in Kiev, including sniper fire.
“Things started moving faster after that,” Churkin told Sergei Brilev’s Vesti v Subbotu news programme on Russian television on Saturday, March 8.
“As provided for in the February 21 agreement, which some are trying to forget now, all events that led to the forcible change of power in Kiev, especially all manifestations of violence, must be properly investigated. When such an investigation is conducted, we will learn very many interesting things that opposition snipers shot not only their targets but also law enforcers,” he said.
“We can learn many interesting things about how the gunmen were trained for weeks, who trained them and sent them over to provoke the use of force in Ukraine,” Churkin said.
In his opinion, such an investigation is necessary also because “many people, say, in America are not aware of this at all because they saw a totally different kind of images on their television.”
He did not rule out that his call for the investigation may be vetoed. “Such a probability theoretically exists. For example, the Security Council may make the decision to conduct a special investigation, but, given the position of our Western colleagues, I think it would be unrealistic to expect this,” Churkin said.
As an example he cited the fact that “some time ago Russia, with the support of Serbian friends, raised in the U.N. Security Council the question of investigating horrible incidents with the unlawful procurement of human organs [in Kosovo]. Unfortunately, this proposal was blocked by Western members of the Security Council. So I think that the U.N. is unlikely to be able to adopt such a decision on the investigation,” he said.
However, Churkin believes that it is possible to influence “international minds and thus the Ukrainian authorities and all those in Ukraine who may be involved in such an investigation.”
“It is important to conduct the investigation in such a way as to produce a real result and find those responsible for the dramatic events we all saw in Kiev,” he said.