Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing Following the Attack on Starobelsk

Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing Following the Attack on Starobelsk.

Main statement:

Mr. President,

On May 19, the Security Council held a meeting on Ukraine which was convened at the request of Ukraine and its Western backers.

At that meeting, Permanent Representative Melnik, who loves to show off his knowledge of Russian aphorisms and sayings, assured all those present – “Unlike Russia, Ukraine’s Forces never target civilians. We only destroy military assets in full compliance with international humanitarian law. And we reject all the fairy tales that we just heard.”

He referred to Russia’s statement citing some “crocodile tears by the representative of Russia, who once again seeks to squeeze sympathy and compassion out of this Chamber.”

He held forth on his favorite topics: the collapse of Russia’s economy and its inevitable disintegration, as well as the remarkable successes of the Ukrainian army and Moscow’s imminent defeat.

In connection with this, I wish to invite Mr. Melnik to Russia – I am certain that we will be able to ensure his safety there – so that he could see firsthand how Russia’s economy is “collapsing,” and not just in Moscow, but in the provinces as well. The only thing is, I doubt that the Ukrainian permanent representative has any desire to shatter his wishful thinking.

We also wish to ask pan Melnik: If the successes of the Ukrainian army “in the fight against the aggressor” are so incredible, why is the Kiev clique droning on and on about an immediate and unconditional ceasefire? These desperate appeals are somewhat at odds with your assessments of the situation on the battlefield.

However, these are all rhetorical questions which will never be answered. The Ukrainian Permanent Representative acts at the Security Council as a mouthpiece for Kiev’s propaganda machine, attempting to win over impressionable Europeans with his grandiloquent speeches, so that they, for God’s sake, have no doubts about the need to continue supporting Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

Mr. President,

Today we have convened an emergency UNSC meeting in connection to yet another horrific terrorist attack perpetrated by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime against Russian civilians.

In the early hours of May 22, the Ukrainian army used four fixed-wing drones to launch a targeted strike on the administrative buildings and dormitory of the Starobelsk College of the Lugansk State Pedagogical University.

According to existing reports, at the time of the incident, there were 86 students aged 14 to 18 and one staff member in the dormitory building. As a result, the five-story building collapsed down to the second floor. As of 3 p.m., it has been confirmed that six people have died, and more than 40 children have been wounded to varying degrees. Unfortunately, that number is likely to rise. A number of children are in critical condition and remain in hospital, with the search for missing people going on: there are still children buried under the rubble. In addition, administrative buildings, stores, and private homes have also been damaged in the city of Starobelsk. In one of them a man has been wounded. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has initiated a criminal case. I will not overburden the Council members with photos from the site. Such as these ones, for example. We kindly requested the Chinese presidency to circulate these crime scene images among the membership of the Council.

Thus, this was a deliberate strike targeting a civilian facility where children live and study; this strike was carried out at nighttime when the dormitory was full, and it was clearly perpetrated with the aim of incurring the highest possible number of casualties. Under international humanitarian law, this constitutes a war crime. By no means could this have been an accidental strike: there were three waves of drones that hit the same location. Neither could the UAV strike on the college have been the result of air defense or radio electronic warfare, as was immediately claimed by Kiev. None of those inside the building were or could have been taking part in hostilities, and there are no military facilities in the vicinity of the college. This was an attack targeting sleeping children, and this is yet another testament to the craven, terrorist, and anti-human nature of the Kiev regime: it is sustaining losses on the battlefield and hitting in agony what is the most sacred, with the West turning a blind eye to these crimes and covering them up. Furthermore, this clearly attests to the bad faith and unwillingness to negotiate on the part of Kiev, which –  acting with the connivance of its Western sponsors – not only fails to embrace a peaceful resolution but is openly sabotaging it.

Such strikes using long-range weapons supplied to the Kiev regime by NATO countries – including UAVs – are being carried out with technical assistance from foreign specialists from well-known NATO States. We have verifiable information that Western capitals are providing the Ukrainian armed forces with intelligence and assisting them with targeting.

Mr. President,

Today, yet again, we will certainly hear a whole host of hypocritical comments that we would not be here today had Russia not unleashed an “aggressive war.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is a blatant lie, intended for the sole purpose – and I underscore this – to deliberately mislead everyone present in this chamber.

Had Russia not launched its special military operation, tragedies like the one in Starobelsk would have occurred every day. Moreover, for eight long years – up until 2022 – such deliberate strikes targeting civilians in Donbass were indeed conducted on a virtually daily basis. The media outlets, which are entirely controlled by the Kiev regime’s Western handlers, simply ignored these countless human casualties. Russian and Russian-speaking residents were mercilessly persecuted, and they were treated as “second-class” citizens. The so-called “leaders” of the Western world did everything possible to ensure that the public in their countries remained in the dark about the atrocities perpetrated by the radicals who had seized power in Ukraine. They vigorously attempted to create a rosy image of the “new democratic authorities,” who brought to fulfillment the “Revolution of Dignity,” and thanks to whom the Ukrainian people – who were allegedly brutally oppressed by Yanukovych – finally attained their long-anticipated freedom. The truth is that this was by no means a “Revolution of Dignity,” but rather an unconstitutional, bloody coup, which was orchestrated from abroad only to oust the legitimately elected president.

You will never hear Western self-proclaimed “beacons of democracy” tell the truth about what has been transpiring in Ukraine for all this time, since 2014, and continues up to this day. They remain silent about the fact that the “post-Maidan” cabal is forcibly imposing an outright, inhumane nationalism that is alien to the majority of people in Ukraine. They tend to hush up the consistent glorification in Ukraine of those who, during World War II, collaborated with the Nazis, brutally exterminating hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians. Another glaring example of this kind is Europeans silently observing how Nazi-Hitlerite Andrey Melnik was exhumed in Luxembourg and then heinously reburied in the center of Kiev.

The crackdown on any dissent is ongoing, and the opposition has long been languishing in torture chambers. Men of draft age, including those unfit for service, are being rounded up in broad daylight on the streets of Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and many other cities; and subsequently they are either maimed and killed or sent to the front lines to fight for the corrupt officials who have entrenched themselves on Bankovaya Street and their sponsors. There are thousands of such egregious cases, and we regularly raise them both at Security Council meetings and informal “Arria-formula” meetings.

And how do Western champions of human rights react to all this? The answer is simple – they do not react at all! They either continue to gloss over what is happening, tacitly condoning their tamed terrorists or even applauding them. Moreover, they hypocritically deny their complicity in the Ukrainian crisis, and their role in fostering and indulging the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.

Mr. President,

The Kiev neo-Nazi regime has never ceased its attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure of our country, using cruise missiles and long-range rocket artillery supplied by Western countries. Officials on Bankovaya Street openly express joy when women, children, and the elderly die, and when residential buildings and social facilities are hit.

In April alone, at least 100 civilians (including 8 children) were killed as a result of criminal acts by Ukrainian militants, and 667 people, including 34 minors, were injured. Over the past week, 234 Russian citizens have been affected by constant shelling and drone strikes by Ukrainian nationalists. Of them, 203 people were wounded, including 18 children, and 31 people were killed, including 2 children.

The death of people is always a tragedy. This makes the cynical comments by certain European colleagues all the more baffling: they clearly divide civilians into those whose killings they condemn and those whose extermination they ignore, or even heinously call “legitimate,” citing Kiev’s right to “self-defense.”

This deliberate killing of minors took place against the backdrop of Kiev’s mendacious lamentations regarding the plight of children affected by the hostilities. The whole world is bearing witness to how cynical the Zelensky regime is, as it is children that are becoming the targets of their terror. Once again, we are compelled to note that Security Council members from Western countries, who trot out insinuations and myths about the alleged 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, remain silent about the criminal actions of the Ukrainian armed forces targeting Russian children, deeming them unworthy of protection. Similar outrageous “double standards” were demonstrated by them regarding the Iranian schoolgirls killed as a result of a US strike in late February in Minab, as well as regarding the minors killed in the Gaza Strip, which has turned into a “children’s graveyard.”

A number of the countries seated at this table are major suppliers of weapons to the Zelensky regime and are not even concealing the fact that they deem this as their legitimate right. You need to understand that, when doing so, you are condoning acts of terrorism and becoming complicit in crimes such as the one committed last night. And accountability for these decisions and crimes is inevitable.

We call on international organizations, national governments, and the global community to give a frank assessment of the criminal actions by the Zelensky regime and to strongly condemn the bloody terrorist attack in Starobelsk. Silence would be tantamount to complicity in the brutal acts by the Kiev terrorists and indifference to the plight of all innocent children who were murdered and injured.

Let me sum up. We began our special military operation to put an end to the bloodshed and lawlessness perpetrated by the regime in a neighboring country, and rest assured that all its goals will be attained.

Thank you.

Right of reply:

Mr. President,

Indeed, I am very impressed by the Ukrainian Permanent Representative’s knowledge of Russian history, but, with your permission, I will not engage in a dialogue with him, because it would be a pointless exercise in futility.

I wanted to say something else. Frankly speaking, I feel somewhat embarrassed and ashamed for some of my colleagues on the Security Council. We anticipated hearing something like that from the European members of the Security Council, but today their cynicism has gone off the charts. Not a single one of them saw fit to even mention the children who perished in Starobelsk.

The representative of Denmark cited a lack of access. Well, do you need access to the rubble? Or perhaps you will allege that Russia did all this itself? Or claim that all these images are merely computer-generated? You say that you are not sure and that there is no independent verification that this incident has not been staged. Yet even the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces confirmed their strikes on Starobelsk.

This cannot be even called hypocrisy or double standards – this is a blatant mockery of child victims. Earlier, in our statement we said that, for you, there are victims who deserve your grief and those who do not. Your words – and I refer to both the present and absent members of the EU – are an affront to all those who have suffered, no matter on which side they are.

How have we ever reached a point where European representatives no longer view children, young students in Starobelsk, residents of Donbass, and Russian people in general as human beings? This, however, does not dehumanize them – it dehumanizes you, sitting in this chamber.

Are you really not ashamed of saying what we’re hearing right now? After all, this is nothing short of dancing on the bones of the dead. I find it all utterly repugnant. I would genuinely feel sorry for you, were it not for your vile cynicism and your disrespect for the memory of the perished.

Thank you.

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