MOSCOW, June 12./ITAR-TASS/. Russian human rights experts at the Geneva session of the United Nations Organization’s Human Rights Council urged the international community to unite efforts and help Ukraine to overcome the long-lasting crisis, Russia’s foreign ministry reports on Thursday.

A discussion organized by the Russian side, featured deputy head of the Russian Peace Fund, writer Anatoly Salutsky, head of the Moscow human rights bureau - Alexander Brod, head of the Demography Research Foundation - Maxim Grigoryev.

“They have presented clear evidences of mass and grave violations of human rights in Ukraine, which continue from the beginning of the events in Maidan (Kiev’s central Independence Square) in November 2013. They made special focus on the tragedy in Odessa on May 2 and on the deaths of civilians in Kiev’s punitive operation against the people living in the eastern regions,” the Russian foreign ministry said. “The speakers stressed the growing radical, and first of all neo-Nazi and racist, ideologies in Ukraine. The human rights experts called on the international community to unite efforts for assisting Ukraine overcome the long-lasting crisis.”

Reporters of Russia’s Life News television channel Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saichenko organized a briefing. The reporters had been detained in Ukraine in mid-May. They “urged the international community to condemn strongly the violence and the persecution of the media in Ukraine.”

“Both events have attracted much attention and allowed the participants to present the situation in Ukraine and Russia’s position to the public, including diplomats, reporters and human rights experts,” the foreign ministry said.