UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday there should be no longer any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and completely dissolve it from the world map.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to try to annex all of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, even installing “illegitimate”. proxy officials in Russian-controlled areas, with the aim of holding fake referendums or decrees to join Russia.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “has even stated that this is Russia’s war objective,” he said.
Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow’s overall goal in Ukraine is to liberate its people from its “unacceptable regime.”
Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to -se of the regime, which is absolutely anti-popular and anti-historic”.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polyansky, told the Security Council on Friday that “The de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine will be carried out in full.”
“From this stage there should no longer be any threat to the Donbas, nor to Russia, nor to the liberated territories of Ukraine, where for the first time in several years people can finally feel that they can live as they want “, he said. .
Polyansky also warned that Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets were moving “the provisional security line” further west, “and in doing so, further clarifying the objectives and the objectives of our special military operation.”
Thomas-Greenfield went after countries that say “one country’s security should not come at the expense of another,” questioning what they call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He did not name any countries, but it is a view that China has frequently repeated, including on Friday by its deputy UN ambassador Geng Shuang.
He told the council: “Putting one’s own security above that of others, trying to strengthen military blocs, establishing absolute superiority … will only lead to conflict and confrontation, divide the international community and make it less secure.”
The US ambassador also went after nations calling for all countries to adopt diplomacy without naming Russia, saying: “Let’s be clear: Russia’s ongoing actions are the obstacle to resolving this crisis.” Again, he did not name any countries, but a significant number of nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East take this approach.
Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of increasing atrocities, including reported bombings of schools and hospitals, “the killing of aid workers and journalists, the targeting of civilians trying to flee, the brutal execution-style killing of those who went about their daily business in Bucha,” ” the suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.
He said there is evidence that Russian forces “have interrogated, forcibly detained, deported approximately hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children, uprooting them from their homes and sending them to remote regions in the east.”
Nearly 2 million Ukrainian refugees have been sent to Russia, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these trips as forced transfers to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations of war victims who already speak Russian and are grateful for a new home.
A recent Associated Press investigation based on dozens of interviews has found that while the situation is more nuanced than Ukrainians suggest, many refugees are forced to make a surreal journey to Russia, subjected to abuse along the way of human rights, without documents. and were left confused and lost as to where they are. Those leaving pass through a series of points known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being turned away and never seen again.
“The United Nations has information that officials in the Russian presidential administration are monitoring and coordinating leak operations,” Thomas-Greenfield told the council.
Polyansky responded that despite Ukraine’s efforts to intimidate its citizens, “people are choosing the country they trust” — Russia.
He warned that heavy weapons poured into Ukraine by the West “will pour into Europe” because of what he claimed is “the flourishing corruption among the political and military leadership of Ukraine.”
Polyansky said Western weapons are only “dragging the agony and increasing the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”
Addressing Western ambassadors, he said: “The objectives of our special military operation will be achieved by any means, no matter how much fuel you pour on the fire in the form of weapons.”