- Genesis of Ukraine conflict – 39
In a video speech delivered on April 5, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy informed a meeting of the UN’s Security Council of mass atrocities committed by Russian forces against the civilian population of his country in connection with Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
In particular, Zelenskyy told the council’s members of war crimes committed in Bucha, a town recently liberated from troops of the Russian Federation, which included executions, rape and torture.
He pointed out that Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities with artillery and air strikes, creating mass starvation, shooting at civilians and targeting shelters. If it continues, he warns, countries will rely not on international law or global institutions to ensure security, but rather, on the power of their own arms.
“This is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council,” the President emphasized. As a permanent member, Russia used its veto right to block a resolution of the council condemning its actions.
“We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill. Which undermines the whole architecture of global security”, Zelenskyy pointed out in his speech. “The chain of mass killings from Syria to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Yemen and Libya should have been stopped a long time ago,” he added.
Zelenskyy urged the UN to reform its system of collective security “immediately”. He said that the goals underlying the UN’s foundation in 1945 were not achieved “and it is impossible to achieve them without reforms.”
“If your current format is unalterable and there is simply no way out, then the only option would be to dissolve yourself altogether,” he told the Council’s members. Zelenskyy proposed that a global conference on how to reform the world security system should be held in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
The President stated that “we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace. Prevent aggression and force aggressors to peace. Have the determination and ability to punish if the principles of peace are violated.”
Noting that he had just returned from Bucha, the newly liberated suburb of Kyiv that has become notorious since images of mass civilian deaths there emerged at the weekend, he recounted how Russian forces had sought and purposely killed anyone who served Ukraine.
He said, in honour of the deceased: those shot in the head after being tortured, thrown into wells, crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars, and those whose limbs were cut off and tongues pulled out because the aggressors “did not hear what they wanted to hear”.
He accused Russia of wanting to “turn Ukrainians into silent slaves” and openly stealing everything, “starting with food and ending with gold earrings that are pulled out and covered with blood”.
Tactics no different those used by terrorists
These tactics, he said, are no different than those used by terrorist group Da’esh – except that they are now being perpetrated by a permanent member of the Security Council. “Where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee?” he implored.
Recalling that Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann did not go unpunished, the Ukrainian president said it was time for reform. “The power of peace must become dominant”.
He challenged the Council to either remove the Russian Federation as a source of war so it can no longer block decisions made about its own aggression, or simply “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing to do other than engage in conversation. “Are you ready to close the United Nations? Do you think that the time for international law is gone?” he asked. “Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace,” he insisted.
Guterres regret over division in UN
Bolstering that plea in an earlier briefing to the Council, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, expressed deep regret over divisions that have prevented the Council from acting not only on Ukraine – but on other threats to peace around the world. He urged the Organization’s flagship security body to do “everything in its power” to end the war.
Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo similarly noted that conditions had seriously deteriorated since her 17 March briefing. The number of Ukrainian civilians killed has more than doubled; Ukrainian cities continue to be mercilessly pounded, often indiscriminately, by heavy artillery and aerial bombardments; and hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in encircled areas under nightmarish conditions.
“The devastation wrought on Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities is one of the shameful hallmarks of this senseless war,” she said.
She called on Kyiv and Moscow to quickly translate any progress in their ongoing negotiations into action on the ground, emphasizing that indiscriminate attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.
“The massive destruction of civilian objects and the high number of civilian casualties, strongly indicate that the fundamental principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution have not been sufficiently adhered to,” she stressed.
Addressing the Council from Geneva, Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, said that over a quarter of Ukraine’s population has fled. “Perilous conditions are hampering our efforts to access civilians – or for them to access us,” he stressed.
In one sign of progress, he announced that in the past day, another convoy was dispatched from the humanitarian coordination hub in Dnipro to Sievierodonetsk – in the far east – with food, winter clothing, non-food items, medicine and hygiene kits offloaded to the Ukraine Red Cross today.
Russian Ambassador’s counter
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia countered that in fact his country had saved 123,500 people in Mariupol, without any help from Ukraine. Over 600,000 people have been evacuated to Russian territory since its “special operation” began. “We’re not talking about coercion or abduction”, he clarified. These voluntary decisions are supported by videos on social media, he said.
To Ukraine’s President, he said: “We place on your conscience the ungrounded accusations against the Russian military,” which are uncorroborated by eye-witnesses.
He said any hopes tied to the President’s election had failed to materialize following his launch of a linguistic inquisition against Russian speakers in the Donbas region. “We were on the verge of correcting injustices” sparked by the 2014 events at Maidan, he recalled.
In reply to accusations against Russian forces criminality in Bucha, he blamed Kyiv and the Western media for promoting “flagrant inconsistencies” and said that there are, in fact, recordings of Ukrainian radicals shooting civilians.
Moreover, he said, the corpses seen in a graphic video presented to the Council by President Zelenskyy “in no way” resemble those who reportedly had been on the ground for four days. He implored Ukraine’s President to recognize that his country is only a pawn in the geopolitical game against the Russian Federation.
From the European perspective, said Olof Skoog, head of the European Union delegation – which numbers most of the nations taking in millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine – Russia’s war of aggression jeopardizes the rules-based order, as well as European and global security.
He described images from Bucha as a “stain on our common humanity”, and demanded that Moscow immediately stop its military aggression, unconditionally withdraw all forces from Ukraine and fully respect its territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence within its internationally recognized borders.
Russia expelled from UN Human Rights Council
Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to suspend Russia from the organisation’s leading human rights body amid allegations that its soldiers killed civilians, while retreating from the region around Ukraine’s capital.
The United States-initiated resolution on April 8, achieved the two-thirds majority of UNGA voting members required to pass, with 93 votes cast in favour and 24 against. Fifty-eight countries abstained, but their votes did not count towards the final tally. While China supporting Russia opposed the resolution, both India and Pakistan have absented.
The brief resolution expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly at the reports of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation, including gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights”.
The vote, which makes Moscow the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to ever have its membership revoked from any United Nations body, was immediately welcomed by Kyiv but criticised by Moscow.
“War criminals have no place in UN bodies aimed at protecting human rights. Grateful to all member states which supported the relevant UNGA resolution and chose the right side of history,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.
For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed regret about the decision. “We’re sorry about that,” Peskov said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News. “And we’ll continue to defend our interests using every possible legal means,” he said. Russia had called on an unspecified number of countries to vote “no”, saying an abstention or not voting would be considered an unfriendly act and would affect bilateral relations.
Five big powers insisted on a privileged status
On the same day the Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, Andreas Bummel, was speaking virtually at a seminar of the School of Civic Education in Vienna which brought together citizens from Ukraine and Russia to discuss efforts to stop the war, among other things. In Russia, the school was labeled a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities and had to cease its operations in the Russian Federation.
Bummel said at the event that in 1945 the five big powers China, France, the Soviet Union, UK, and the United States had insisted on a privileged status at the UN and otherwise might not have helped establish and join the organization. However, he explained that at the time there was an agreement to review the arrangement within a period of ten years. “You can find this provision in Article 109 of the UN Charter and it is still valid,” Bummel said.
Due to the Cold War, the promise of reviewing the UN Charter was not kept and then forgotten according to Bummel. “Maybe now is a window of opportunity”, he told the audience as the UN’s failure once more was apparent in view of Russia’s war of aggression. “There is a dilemma because due to the Charter’s provisions, the veto powers legally would have to agree to abolish the veto power,” he pointed out.
According to Bummel, the UN should move from a state-centric to a people-centered model. In a discussion paper published previously on the design of a “renewed world organization for the 21st century”, he suggested, among other things, that today’s Security Council should be abolished and replaced by a “Joint Security Committee” elected by the General Assembly and a new World Parliamentary Assembly. In this model, there would be no permanent membership status and no single country would yield a veto right.
