Speaking before the United Nations Security Council by video link on Tuesday (April 5th), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged the intergovernmental organization, judging that it was not fulfilling its peacekeeping mandate, reports the Kyiv Post.
“Are you ready to shut down the UN? And the time of international law is over? If your answer is no, then you must act immediately”he urged.
The head of state demanded that Moscow be “held accountable” for “worst war crimes committed since World War II, he said.
He was speaking just days after the discovery “atrocities committed by Russia against civilians in the northwestern suburbs of kyiv”and in particular in Boutcha, where “at least 300 people were ‘killed and tortured’ by invading Russian forces before they withdrew earlier this month”trace the Kyiv Post. The Ukrainian newspaper recalls that Russia denies having killed civilians in Boutcha, and accuses kyiv “for having staged the savagery discovered”.
“Horrible” pictures
His speech, that “of a man who considers himself to have the highest moral authority”according to BBCended on a video “flood, showing dead Ukrainians, some burned and disfigured”.
However, after these words “inflamed” and these pictures “horrible”the dividing lines “seemed unchanged” within the Security Council, notes the New York Times. “The United Kingdom and the United States condemned the apparent atrocities, China and the United Arab Emirates […] said the Council should wait for the facts to be established by investigators, and Russia again denied that its troops committed any wrongdoing.”