The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, sought suspension of the Russian Federation from the Human Rights Council over Ukraine’s accusation that invading troops massacred civilians in the town of Bucha.
Thomas-Greenfield, who made the call while addressing the UN Security Council on Tuesday in New York, said that Russia had been using its membership as a platform for its propaganda.
The Human Rights Council is a body at the UN charged with promoting and protecting human rights globally.
Two-thirds of the 193 members of the UN would need to vote in favor of suspending Russia from the council for committing human rights abuses if the US push must be successful.
It was gathered that Thomas-Greenfield made the move after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky briefed the Council on the killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
Based on available information, she said that the US had assessed that the Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine.
The envoy said, that, behind the images of bombed-out buildings, many people had “stuffed their lives into backpacks” and left the only home they had ever known.
She gave her account of the refugee crisis in parts of Europe, having returned on April 4 from the Republic of Moldova and Romania.
Russian Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, countered this, stating that his country had saved 123,500 people in Mariupol, without any help from Ukraine.
“More than 600,000 people have been evacuated to Russian territory since its “special operation” began.
“We’re not talking about coercion or abduction,” he clarified.
“These voluntary decisions are supported by videos on social media,’’ he said.
To Ukraine’s president, he said, “We place on your conscience the ungrounded accusations against the Russian military,” which are uncorroborated by eye-witnesses.
He said that any hope tied to the president’s election had failed to materialise, following his launch of a linguistic inquisition against Russian speakers in the Donbas region.
“We were on the verge of correcting injustices” sparked by the 2014 events at Maidan, he said.
In reply to accusations against Russian forces’ criminality in Bucha, he blamed Kyiv and the western media for promoting “flagrant inconsistencies” and said that there were, in fact, recordings of Ukrainian radicals shooting civilians.
Moreover, he said that the corpses were seen in a graphic video presented to the Council by President Zelenskyy “in no way” resemble those who reportedly had been on the ground for four days.
He implored Ukraine’s President to recognise that his country was only a pawn in the geopolitical game against the Russian Federation.
