The US ambassador to the United Nations has said that there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine \u201cand dissolve it from the world map entirely\u201d.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council on Friday that the US is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing \u201cillegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia\u201d.
Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov \u201chas even stated that this is Russia\u2019s war aim\u201d, she said.
Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow\u2019s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its \u201cunacceptable regime\u201d.
Apparently suggesting that Moscow\u2019s war aims extend beyond Ukraine\u2019s industrial Donbas region in the east comprising Donetsk and Luhansk, Lavrov said: \u201cWe will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.\u201d
Russia\u2019s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council on Friday that \u201cThe de-Nazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine will be carried out in full\u201d.
\u201cThere 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,\u201d he said.
Polyansky also warned Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets that they were shifting \u201cthe provisional security line\u201d further toward the west, \u201cand in so doing clarifying even further the aims and objectives of our special military operation.\u201d
Thomas-Greenfield went after countries that say \u201cone country\u2019s security should not come at the expense of another\u2019s\u201d, asking what they call Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. She didn\u2019t name any country but this is a view China has repeated frequently, including on Friday by its deputy UN ambassador Geng Shuang.
He told the council, \u201cPutting one\u2019s own security above that of others, attempting to strengthen military blocs, establishing absolute superiority \u2026 will only lead to conflict and confrontation, divide the international community and make themselves less secure\u201d.
The US ambassador also went after nations that call for all countries to embrace diplomacy without naming Russia, saying: \u201cLet us be clear: Russia\u2019s ongoing actions are the obstacle to a resolution to this crisis.\u201d
Again she named no countries but a significant number of nations in Africa, Asia and the Mideast take this approach.
Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of mounting atrocities including the reported bombings of schools and hospitals, \u201cthe killing of aid workers and journalists, the targeting of civilians attempting to flee, the brutal execution-style murder of those going about their daily business in Bucha\u201d, the suburb of Ukraine\u2019s capital Kyiv where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.
She said there is evidence Russia forces \u201chave interrogated, detained forcibly, deported an estimated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children — tearing them from their homes and sending them to remote regions in the east\u201d.
Nearly two million Ukrainians 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 Associated Press investigation based on dozens of interviews has found that while the situation is more nuanced that the Ukrainians suggest, many refugees are indeed forced to embark on a surreal trip into 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.
\u201cThe US has information that officials from Russia\u2019s presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations,\u201d Thomas-Greenfield told the council.
Polyansky countered that despite Ukraine\u2019s efforts at intimidation of their citizens \u201cpeople are choosing the country that they trust\u201d — Russia.
He warned that heavy weapons being poured into Ukraine by the West \u201cwill spill over into Europe\u201d because of what he claimed is \u201cthe flourishing corruption among Ukraine\u2019s political and military leadership\u201d.
Polyansky said Western weapons are only \u201cdragging out the agony and increasing the suffering of the Ukrainian people\u201d.
Addressing Western ambassadors, he said: \u201cThe aims of our special military operation will be achieved either way, however much fuel you pour into the fire in the form of weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US ambassador to the United Nations has said that there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine \u201cand dissolve it from the world map entirely\u201d.Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council on Friday that the US is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":284920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}