Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Ukraine

On December 9, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report “Killings of civilians: summary executions and attacks on individual civilians in the Kiev, Chernigov and Suma regions in the context of the Russian Federation’s armed attack against Ukraine.” The document covers the period from February 24 to April 6 and is based on the “findings” of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), which has long discredited itself.

The report is a compilation of incoherent and unsubstantiated “testimonies” made by people who were supposedly randomly selected. In fact, it is nothing but rumours and gossip that raise numerous questions. So, we are again dealing with what has become the brand methodology of the OHCHR and HRMMU on collecting evidence that is mostly based on the well-known principle of “there are grounds to believe.” UN employees were using a non-transparent system for selecting “witnesses” and asked them “the right” leading questions.

Characteristically, the OHCHR draws conclusions regarding the Russian Armed Forces’ guilt based on such evidence as the presence of camouflage outfits, Kalashnikov rifles and a Slavic appearance – attributes that can easily apply to the Ukrainian military as well. Indicatively, the OHCHR admits in the report that such information is rarely sufficient to identify the perpetrator or to link a specific unit or individual to a murder that has been committed.

Naturally, the report does not say a word about the atrocities committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the nationalist battalions against civilians in those regions in retaliation for collaboration with the Russian Armed Forces. Thus, this report is one-sided and biased. Its aim is to discredit Russia’s special military operation and to demonise and dehumanise Russian military personnel.

However, this approach of the OHCHR to the events in Ukraine no longer surprises us. For eight years, it did not notice any violations of international legal standards on human rights and international humanitarian law by the Ukrainians, including artillery shelling of residential areas and civilian facilities in Donbass by their militants on a nearly daily basis. Not once during this period did the OHCHR urge Kiev to identify those responsible and bring them to justice for the deaths of the region’s civilians as a result of actions by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Therefore, this is further proof that the OHCHR has completely lost its independence, continuing to broadcast Western narratives on the situation in Ukraine.