(Headline USA) The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on July 29 that there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and dissolve it from the world map entirely.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex Ukrainian regions.
Among them are all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
She also said that Russians want to install “illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.”
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council on July 29 that “the de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine will be carried out in full.”
“There must no longer be a threat from this stage to Donbas, nor to Russia, nor to the [‘] liberated [‘] Ukrainian territories where for the first time in several years people are finally able to feel that they can live the way they want,” he said.
Polyansky also warned Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets that they were shifting “the provisional security line” further toward the west, “and in so doing clarifying even further the aims and objectives of our special [‘] military operation. [‘]”
Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of mounting atrocities.
Among them are the reported bombings of schools and hospitals, “killing of aid workers and journalists, targeting of civilians attempting to flee, brutal execution-style murder of those going about their daily business in Bucha.”
Bucha is the suburb of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.
She said there is evidence Russian forces “have interrogated, detained forcibly, deported estimated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children — tearing 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 both Ukrainian and Russian officials.
Ukraine portrays these journeys 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 AP investigation based on dozens of interviews has found that many refugees are indeed forced to embark on a trip to Russia, subjected along the way to human rights abuses, stripped of documents and left confused and lost about where they are.
Those who leave go through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being yanked aside and never seen again.
“The United Nations has information that officials from Russia’s presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations,” Thomas-Greenfield told the council.
Addressing Western ambassadors, Polyansky said: “The aims of our special [‘] military operation [‘] will be achieved either way, however much fuel you pour into the fire in the form of weapons.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
