MOSCOW, April 1. /TASS/. After the release of videos showing torture of Russian soldiers, Kiev has been trying to prevent the leaks of more such evidence, the press bureau of Russia’s foreign intelligence SVR said in a news release.
"The foreign intelligence is receiving confirmed evidence that after the publication of shocking videos of torture of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, the nationalist regime in Kiev has been taking measures to prevent the disclosure of such facts," the news release reads.
The SVR said that according to available information, the Ukrainian authorities have been urging their Western patrons to persuade the International Red Cross and various non-governmental organizations to give up attempts to get access to Russian prisoners of war.
"The Ukrainian leadership has notified Britain’s Foreign Office that it is not going to observe the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. Seized Russian soldiers, many of them wounded, are denied food and urgent medical assistance on the excuse many Ukrainians lack them, too," the SVR said.
"In response, the British Foreign Office recommended Kiev to let International Red Cross staffers visit several Russians kept in "exemplary conditions". This would make it possible to improve the image of the Ukrainian authorities in the eyes of the world community and partially neutralize the negative impression produced by the released videos of POW tortures. For their part, the Western countries are ready to help arrange for a trip by a group of "credible" IRCC representatives to a site where POWs are kept in ostensibly normal conditions," the news release says.
Such manipulations, the SVR said, convincingly prove that the authorities of many Western countries, which position themselves as human rights champions, are not only aware of Kiev’s crude violations of international humanitarian law, but are also trying to help it shirk responsibility.
"In fact, they are accomplices to inhuman crimes being committed by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and requires a corresponding legal assessment," the SVR said.