GENEVA, May 30. /TASS/. Due to their belligerence at the Istanbul talks in 2022, Kiev and the North Atlantic Alliance are responsible for the deaths of a million people victimized by the Ukraine conflict, said Alfred de Zayas, an American lawyer who used to serve as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Kiev and NATO countries "bear enormous responsibility for the deaths of perhaps a million people" in Ukraine as they rejected peace talks in March 2022 and derailed the implementation of a compromise decision reached in Turkey, de Zayas argued. According to him, their belligerent attitude "constitutes a violation of the UN Charter and also of human ethics." "The citizens of Germany and the other NATO states must also understand that the UN Charter takes precedence over the NATO Treaty," the lawyer said in an interview with Zeitgeschehen im Fokus.

Russia’s special military operation was triggered by "NATO's eastward expansion, the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, supported by the US and the EU, and Ukraine's systematic violation of the Minsk agreements," de Zayas stressed. "Unfortunately, NATO states still refuse to admit this," he lamented.