The UN should resist pressure from Kiev’s Western backers and finally address the issue of widespread abuse of captured Russian servicemen in Ukrainian secret prisons, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik has said.
During a conversation with the chairman of the UN Committee Against Torture Claude Heller on Thursday, Miroshnik said that Moscow is aware of a whole network of such detention facilities, operating in Ukraine’s Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, and Sumy Regions as well as in the country’s capital, Kiev.
The Russian servicemen are “going through hell” in so-called “transit prisons,” which are set up at deployment points of Ukrainian military units and nationalist battalions, he said.
“The thugs, who hide their faces behind masks... and address each other only by their call signs, subject the captured Russian troops to inhuman abuse. Waterboarding, electrocuting, baiting with dogs and amputations performed without anesthesia are just a few examples of the techniques systematically employed by the Ukrainian tormentors,” the envoy, who is charged with documenting Kiev’s war crimes, stressed.
According to Miroshnik, captured troops are usually sent to those facilities in the early stages of their imprisonment, where they are held in cages, pits, and stone dungeons.
The Kiev government does not allow ombudsmen and human rights activists into those “torture chambers,” but the Russian authorities have gathered hundreds of accounts of survivors detailing what has been happening there, he said.
“This information had been passed on to the UN Secretariat on more than one occasion,” but no action followed, Miroshnik added.
By ignoring the existence of the secret prisons and systematic torture of Russian troops, the global body “encourages the spread of such criminal practices and disregard for the relevant UN Convention,” he added.
“Many experts are aware of this disgraceful phenomenon, yet there is a lack of political will to overcome the pressure from the foreign accomplices to the conflict, who shield the Kiev regime from accountability and prevent a thorough investigation of its conduct,” the envoy said.
While turning a blind eye to the torture of Russian troops, the UN published several reports accusing Russia of mistreating Ukrainian prisoners, based on accounts by POWs returned by Moscow to Kiev. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has labeled those accusations of abuse “disinformation.”
Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the UN Secretariat was unable to properly perform its duties as most key positions are occupied by representatives of NATO countries.
The current team, led by [UN General-Secretary] Antonio Guterres, who is a Portuguese national, “promotes biased approaches and double standards, effectively serving the interests of a group of Western nations,” Lavrov insisted during a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
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