UNITED NATIONS, June 3. /TASS/. Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya advised the West to condemn its own military adventures and start paying compensations to the affected countries.
"I would recommend to the collective West this one thing. If you want to condemn aggression - start with yourselves. Set an example by condemning your own military adventures, illegal economic restrictions, deadly colonial and neo-colonial wars, genocide, and robbery of indigenous peoples. Start paying off compensations to states and nations that suffered from you. Such a step would indeed bring us closer to having a more just world order that would have no place for anyone’s self-proclaimed ‘exceptionalism,’" he told the UN Security Council, responding to Western accusations over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
In the past few months, Russia has been witnessing "a transcendent degree of hypocrisy" in remarks coming from the West. "Against the backdrop of Russian special military operation, they suddenly recalled that there is such a thing as the international law," he said.
"When NATO was attacking Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, international law was perceived only as an annoying impediment. In effectless attempts to justify their aggression against sovereign states, the collective West had to come up with exotic concepts, such as ‘humanitarian intervention,’ ‘war on terror,’ ‘preventive strikes,’" Nebenzya continued.
He went on to say that Russia has no information about any trials of US, UK and other military officers, responsible for military crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
"So what is the take-away of NATO atrocities? The scenario is always the same: lots of casualties, and no one held accountable (even in disciplinary terms, to say nothing of criminal liability)," the Russian envoy said.
As an example of impunity of NATO military, Nebenzya mentioned the 2019 US air strike on the Syrian city of Baghouz that led to numerous civilian deaths, and the Dutch strike targeted residential buildings in the Afghan village of Uruzgan in 2007.
"The West needs the ICC only as a political tool. Nobody even pretends it is not so," the diplomat added.