UN chief points to `the most massive' human rights violations in Ukraine
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered “the most massive violations of human rights” in the world today, the head of the United Nations said Monday, as the war pushed into its second year with no end in sight and tens of thousands dead.
The Russian invasion “has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement,” U.N. SecretaryGeneral António Guterres said in a speech to the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva.
After failing to capture Kyiv in the opening weeks of the invasion on Feb. 24 last year and suffering a series of humiliating setbacks during the fall, Russia has stabilized the front and is concentrating its efforts on capturing four provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September — Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine, meanwhile, hopes to use battle tanks and other new weapons pledged by the West to launch new counteroffensives and reclaim more of the occupied territory.
Guterres said “attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties and terrible suffering.”
The intense fighting for territory in eastern Ukraine was in sharp focus Sunday at a Ukrainian field hospital treating wounded from the intense battle for the city of Bakhmut, which is devastated. A constant flow of battered and exhausted soldiers came in on stretchers.
Anatoliy, the chief of the medical service, said his team treats dozens of soldiers every day and barely has time to eat.
“My medics work practically non-stop. Before the full-scale invasion we had 50-60 wounded in a ninemonth rotation, and now sometimes we have more (than that) in one day,” he told The Associated Press. He provided only one name for security reasons.
Guterres' remarks came as the Ukrainian military said that Russia launched attacks with exploding drones on several regions of the country from late Sunday until Monday morning, killing two people.
Meanwhile, Belarusian opposition activists claimed a military air base outside Belarusia's capital that hosts Russian warplanes came under attack Sunday by Belarusian guerrillas.
BYPOL, an online messaging app channel run by the activists, and several other online resources operated by the Belarusian opposition, said an A-50 early warning and control aircraft was seriously damaged in the attack at the Machulishchy base near Minsk.
The activists provided no evidence to support the claims, which couldn't be independently verified. Belarusian and Russian officials made no comment, but Belarusia's President Alexander Lukashenko urged top military and security officials on Monday to tighten discipline.
Russia used the territory of its ally Belarus to invade Ukraine a year ago. Belarus continues to host Russian troops, warplanes and other weapons.
Guterres, in his Geneva speech, cited cases of sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and violations of the rights of prisoners of war documented by the U.N. human rights office.
He decried how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now 75 years old, has been “too often misused and abused.”
“It is exploited for political gain and it is ignored, often, by the very same people,” Guterres said. “Some governments chip away at it. Others use a wrecking ball.”
“This is a moment to stand on the right side of history,” he told the council, the U.N.'s top human rights body. Russia withdrew from its seat last year amid a surge in international pressure over the war in Ukraine.