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Ukraine is “too weak” to resist the Russian advance, led by “a group of war criminals with access to the nuclear button,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emina Zaparova confirmed at the beginning of the debate to vote on a possible UN commission to investigate the Russian aggression.
“The Russian troops that have stormed into Ukraine are participating in acts that are war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the deputy minister assured before the UN Human Rights Council, who stressed that “thousands of Ukrainians are trying to resist against the tanks in Kyiv, or have placed themselves as human shields in Lugansk.”
In the face of the Russian encirclement, Zaparova welcomed the fact that “an international coalition is gaining strength,”as demonstrated this Wednesday by the massive support of the UN General Assembly for a resolution condemning the invasion, or by the initiation of proceedings in the International Criminal Court or the European Court of Human Rights.
The “number two” of the Ukrainian diplomacy affirmed that civil infrastructures such as schools, orphanages, churches, or hospitals are the target of Russian attacks.
Attacks dictated “without Ukraine doing anything to provoke them, because we only wanted to choose our own future for ourselves, not to accept the one imposed on us by our neighbor.”
Zaparova also recalled the millions of displaced persons and refugees that in just one week Moscow’s offensive has unleashed and showed her solidarity with them by recalling that she herself had to leave her home in Crimea in a hurry when that peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014.
The deputy minister, who remains in Kyiv and has addressed the Human Rights Council by videoconference this Wednesday and today, Thursday, noted that shortly after her speech on the first day she had to run for shelter to the basement, as the alarm sounded of possible Russian shelling.
“We are alive but not safe” stated Zaparova, who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having “pushed Ukraine to hell.”
