Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov holds a press conference through the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at U.N. headquarters on September 24, 2022 in Recent York City.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images
UNITED NATIONS — When Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov takes the helm of the United Nations Security Council on Monday it’s going to be against a backdrop of mounting allegations of Russian war crimes reported across Ukraine.
Ukraine’s top diplomat has called Russia’s temporary presidency, which began on April 1, “the worst joke ever.” Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Moscow may misuse the role, by spreading disinformation in regards to the Ukraine war, “and we are going to stand able to call them out at each moment that they attempt to try this.”
Lavrov, who flew from Moscow to Recent York to preside over the Security Council, will chair a gathering on the importance of defending the U.N. Charter, a founding document that binds the 193 member states and vows to preserve sovereignty, peace, justice and the prevention of war.
Warning: This text accommodates graphic material detailing reports of executions, rape and torture in Ukraine.
The last time Russia held the presidency of the U.N. body tasked with preserving international security was a bit over a 12 months ago, when Moscow ordered its troops to invade Ukraine in the biggest air, sea and ground assault in Europe since World War II.
Since then, the war has claimed the lives of greater than 8,500 civilians, led to almost 14,000 injuries and displaced greater than 8 million people, in accordance with United Nations’ own estimates.
Mariya, 77, whose daughter and son-in-law died under the rubble of a constructing destroyed by Russian shelling, cries, amid Russia’s invasion on Ukraine in Borodyanka, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 8, 2022.
Gleb Garanich | Reuters
Russia’s month-long presidency, which rotates between the Security Council’s 15 members, began with a briefing by Maria Lvova-Belova, the Kremlin’s commissioner for youngsters’s rights.
Lvova-Belova told the Security Council on April 5 that the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia was a part of a humanitarian campaign.
A month prior, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova and Russian President Vladimir Putin over allegations related to “the illegal deportation of kids from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.”
Russian Kid’s Representative Maria Lvova-Belova holds a press conference on the Foreign Ministry following accusations by Ukraine that the Russian leadership is deporting children in its war of aggression against the country.
Ulf Mauder | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
The warrants are the primary the ICC has issued in response to the war in Ukraine, as officials inside the country and all over the world ramp up probes into the horrors of Russia’s nearly 14-month assault. It’s unlikely they will probably be arrested. Piotr Hofmanski, president of the ICC, said international authorities can have to implement the warrants because the court doesn’t have a police force.
The Kremlin has previously said that it doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Investigators are probing allegations of forced deportations, torture, sexual violence and deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, outlined in reports backed by the United Nations and other organizations.
Read more: Russian forces have relocated at the very least 6,000 Ukrainian children to camps since start of war
Ukraine Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told U.S. lawmakers last week that regional authorities have registered greater than 80,000 Russian war crimes since Moscow’s conflict began nearly a 12 months ago.
“Such evil cannot let be,” Kostin said during his graphic testimony last week before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces commit war crimes or deliberately goal civilians. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
UN war crimes report
War crime prosecutor of Kharkiv Oblast stands with forensic technician and policeman at the positioning of a mass burial in a forest during exhumation on September 16, 2022 in Izium, Ukraine.
Yevhenii Zavhorodnii | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images News | Getty Images
A report commissioned by the United Nations last month found Russian forces in Ukraine committed an array of war crimes, including summary executions, torture, rape and other acts of sexual violence against Ukrainian civilians.
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine details violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in 4 regions occupied by Russian armed forces. The commission focused its investigations largely within the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.
In preparing the report, the commission conducted 610 interviews and traveled to 56 cities over eight separate visits. In some cases, the commission found that Ukrainian forces committed war crimes against Russian troops, though those incidents were less frequent.
The commission also inspected sites of destruction, graves, places of detention and torture and examined documents, photographs, satellite imagery and videos.
In one of the vital disturbing examples of sexual violence, the commission details an incident involving a pregnant woman:
Rapes were committed at gunpoint, with extreme brutality and with acts of torture, equivalent to beatings and strangling. Perpetrators at times threatened to kill the victim or her family, if she resisted.
In some cases, a couple of soldier raped the identical victim, or rape of the identical victim was committed several times. In a single incident, the victim was pregnant and begged, in vain, the soldiers to spare her; she had a miscarriage a couple of days later.
The group also wrote that spouses and members of the family, including children, were sometimes forced to observe Russian troops rape their family members.
The commission said that the ages of victims of sexual assault ranged from 4 years of age to over 80 years old.
The report also documents Russian forces unlawfully confining Ukrainian civilians in overcrowded makeshift facilities before carrying out interrogation sessions that involved methods of torture:
Cells were overcrowded, with people forced to sleep on the ground or in turns. At times, men, women, and youngsters were held together. Lack of sunshine and ventilation, difficulties to breathe, absence of heating in freezing temperatures were reported. Sanitary conditions were inadequate, with, at times, buckets or a bottle as a bathroom and limited or no possibility to scrub.
In a single case, 10 older people died as a consequence of the inhuman conditions in a faculty basement, while the opposite detainees, including children, needed to share the identical space with the bodies of the deceased.
The commission wrote that some women restricted their water and food intake out of shame to make use of the bathroom in front of other prisoners.
The group added that in several cases, the confinement was prolonged, with the longest instance lasting over nine months.
In the vast majority of instances, relatives of those taken for detention weren’t informed and reasons for confinement weren’t properly communicated by Russian troops.
Detainees were called ‘Nazis’ and beaten
Kherson, UkraineNov. 16, 2022A Ukrainian police officer stands inside a prison utilized by the Russian forces for interrogations, detentions, and torture in accordance with the Ukrainian authorities on Nov. 16, 2022.
Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
In response to some former detainees, Russian authorities referred to them as “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “terrorists” and compelled them to undergo “denazification sessions” consisting of severe beatings.
The individuals were handcuffed, tied, blindfolded and sustained prolonged beatings with rifle butts or batons. Russian forces also administered electric shocks with tasers and carried out mock executions, in accordance with the commission.
In areas under prolonged Russian control, and in additional everlasting detention facilities, additional methods of torture were used. One such method was electrocution with a military phone called ‘Tapik’ connected to an electricity cable with clips applied on feet, fingers, or men’s genitals. The perpetrators referred to this as “call to Lenin” or “call to Putin”.
Other methods included hanging detainees to the ceiling with hands tied, called “parrot position”, strangling with cables, suffocating with plastic bags or gas masks, rape, and other sexual violence. Victims witnessed the death of co-detainees following severe torture.
One former detainee told the commission that Russian troops administered beatings as a “punishment for speaking Ukrainian” and for “not remembering the lyrics of the anthem of the Russian Federation.”
One other detainee said she passed out a couple of times from beatings, but Russian troops woke her as much as proceed.
The commission concluded in its report that through its investigations within the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy, it found that Russian armed forces carried out an “array of war crimes, violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”
While in Recent York, Lavrov is predicted to reiterate Moscow’s claims that its troops are carrying out a “special military operation” and that Kyiv is the true aggressor.
Lavrov will chair several meetings and is slated to fulfill with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether the U.S. and a few of its allies, like the UK, will attend the sessions Lavrov will chair.
