His deputies Rosemary DiCarlo and Martin Griffiths briefly outlined the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. According to DiCarlo, it has seriously aggravated, Ukrainian cities are being shelled “mercilessly and indiscriminately”. The UN is investigating allegations of Kiev’s use of cluster munitions, DiCarlo said. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also received “credible allegations that Russian forces used cluster munitions in populated areas on at least 24 occasions.” Griffiths recalled that during the fighting in Ukraine, according to the UN, 1,430 civilians had already died. But these figures, he noted, do not correspond to reality, the real ones are much higher.
“Time to Transform the UN System”
Then President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Security Council via video link. There were two main themes in his address – the events in Bucha and the reform of the UN. According to the Ukrainian president, in Bucha, which was recently abandoned by Russian forces, “there is not a single crime that they would not have committed.” He also reacted to the denials of the Russian side (the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that all the footage presented with the dead bodies of civilians is a provocation). “It is now 2022, there are satellite images,” Zelensky said, indicating that the perpetrators could be identified. Kyiv wants to investigate the circumstances of the death of civilians and do it with maximum international participation, including the International Criminal Court (neither Ukraine, nor Russia, nor the United States have ratified the statute of the court).
Turning to an analysis of the activities of the Security Council, Zelensky said that “the main body entrusted with ensuring peace cannot work effectively”: “We need to carry out a reform so that the right of veto does not become the right to die.” (Russia has repeatedly vetoed resolutions on Ukraine that called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.) Zelenskiy said the Security Council has two options: reform and withdraw Russia or dissolve itself. “If, apart from talking, you are not capable of anything, there is no other option,” he said. Kyiv, according to Zelensky, will be ready to accept one of the UN headquarters after the reform.
At the end of his speech, Zelensky planned to show a video from Bucha, but due to a technical hitch, it was shown a little later. The short video showed dead people in civilian clothes on city streets. Nebenzya was able to comment on it during his speech: “You only saw what you wanted to see.” According to him, these corpses do not look like the bodies that have lain for several days, and some since March 20, as some media claim. He also denied Zelensky’s allegations that Russia was taking Ukrainians hostage and forcibly transporting them to its territory. More than 600 thousand people have been evacuated to Russia, we are not talking about coercion or abduction, Nebenzia noted. “We are not hitting civilian targets, so we are not advancing in Ukraine as fast as many expected,” he continued, and then read the testimonies of some eyewitnesses of events in various Ukrainian cities, according to which, in particular, in Mariupol, a Ukrainian tank drove around the drama theater and randomly fired at residential buildings.
“Specific reasons must be established”
Zelensky’s thesis on the reform of the Security Council was not widely discussed by the meeting participants. However, they actively commented on the topic of the international investigation into the events in Bucha, representatives of some countries announced the need to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield is an active promoter of this idea. On Tuesday, she reiterated that Russia has no place in a body whose goal is to uphold human rights. Even before the meeting, she expressed the hope that the UN General Assembly, in which all member countries of the organization are represented, would put this issue to a vote (a two-thirds majority is required to exclude a country from the UN).
The resolution “Aggression against Ukraine” in the UN General Assembly in March was supported by 141 countries, 35 abstained, five delegations – Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea – voted against. At a meeting on Tuesday, the exclusion of Russia was supported by the representative of Albania.
The overwhelming number of participants in the Security Council meeting, including Russia’s key allies India and China, declared the need for an international investigation into what happened in Bucha. “Recent reports of civilians being killed in Bucha are startling. We unequivocally condemn these killings and support the call for an independent investigation,” said Indian Representative T.S. Tirumurti. China’s Permanent Representative Zhang Jun also said the footage shown was amazing. “Concrete reasons must be established,” he said, calling on the parties to refrain from mutual accusations for the time being.