Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a dismissive account of Russia’s war in Ukraine and then abandoned the debate, drawing the jeers of Ukrainian and Western officials.
“Russian diplomats flee almost as aptly as Russian soldiers,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said when he spoke after Lavrov’s departure.
Kuleba’s jibe continued a pile-on that unfolded throughout the meeting as U.N. officials and Western diplomats condemned the war. Lavrov’s lengthy remarks interrupted the litany as he offered a wholesale rejection of International complaints by claiming instead that the war was “inevitable” due to Western and Ukrainian choices and denying responsibility for the atrocities reported in areas occupied by Russian troops. Yet his credibility was under strain on account of the war.
“I sat here in February, listening to the Russian representative assuring this council that Russia had no intention of invading its neighbor,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said during his own address to the Security Council. “We now know that was a lie. And today, I have listened to further installments of Russia’s catalogs of distortions, dishonesty, and disinformation. He has left the chamber. I’m not surprised. I don’t think Mr. Lavrov wants to hear the collective condemnation of this council.”
‘PUNISH YOURSELVES’: LAVROV DISMISSES ‘NARRATIVE ABOUT RUSSIAN AGGRESSION’ IN UKRAINE
Lavrov maintained that Ukrainian officials “staged” the massacres in Bucha, a community outside of Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces during their attempt to take the capital earlier this year, as a way to sabotage negotiations to end the conflict.
“The fact that it was staged leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind,” Lavrov said, through a U.N. translator. “No one has mentioned Bucha other than us … Please demand the Ukrainian authorities to take a simple step to publish information about those individuals whose bodies were shown in Bucha … Secretary-general, please use your authority for this.”
Lavrov made that rhetorical move even though the council meeting opened with a condemnation of the killings in Bucha.
“If I may … be quite direct: When I went to Bucha and went behind St. Andrew’s Church, the bodies I saw were not fake,” International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan told the Security Council meeting. “When I walked the street streets of Borodianka, the destruction that I saw of buildings and schools was all too real. And when I left Kharkiv, the bombs I heard land gave a very somber insight, and a very small insight, into the awful reality that is faced by many of our brothers and sisters and children that are in a war zone.”
Khan also added that he is “deeply concerned” about “the transfer of populations from Ukraine, [to] outside — particularly children,” adding that these allegations need a full investigation and then a full hearing by international judges. “And in my view, the echoes of Nuremberg should be heard today,” he said.
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Kuleba put a focus on Lavrov and his team. “Russian diplomats are directly complicit because their lies incite these crimes and cover them up,” he said. “Before Feb. 24, Russian diplomats here at the United Nations had repeatedly denied plans of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine … Russia is shameless.”
