Russia's deputy foreign minister says Western countries seek to escalate Ukrainian crisis

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) - Russia's deputy foreign minister told the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday that Western countries are deliberately seeking to escalate the Ukrainian crisis.

"Western states are pursuing a course toward an intentional escalation of the Ukraine crisis by supplying Kyiv with newer and newer types of heavy arms. The Western weapons are being actively used by the (Armed Forces of Ukraine) for the shelling of residential buildings, schools and hospitals, the murder of peaceful residents and for the destruction of public infrastructure,” said Sergei Ryabkov, who was in Geneva.

“These are war crimes, a violation of humanitarian law, which NATO member states are involved in and whose representatives love to talk about human rights in a preachy and hypocritical way.”

- Ukraine tramples on rights

Ryabkov said the government in Ukraine tramples on basic human rights and freedoms, acting in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution and its international obligations, and several laws on total "Ukrainization" have been adopted.

This affected education, science, culture, mass media, radio, television, the Internet, advertising and the service industry.

"The Russian language, a mother tongue to millions of Ukrainian residents, has been targeted the greatest," he said.

In a prerecorded statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Human Rights Council that it was meeting "when human rights around the world are under assault, perhaps nowhere more than in Russia's brutal war on Ukraine."

He said the council has played a crucial role in shining a spotlight "on Moscow's horrific and ongoing abuses, including through the creation of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Ukraine."

Blinken said the commission's first report in October concluded that Russia had committed war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.

"As long as Russia continues to wage its war, the COI should continue to document such abuses, providing an impartial record of what's occurring and a foundation for national and international efforts to hold perpetrators accountable," said the secretary of state.

"Governments that commit atrocities abroad are also likely to violate the rights of people at home – and that's exactly what Russia is doing. The Russian government now holds more than 500 political prisoners."

He said the Moscow government's "systematic muzzling" of independent voices in Russian civil society makes the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the country even more important.