Russia's permanent representative to the UN says that the West should pay compensation to those who have suffered from its actions.
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, said on Thursday that the West should condemn its own military adventures and pay out compensation to those who have suffered from its actions.
This one thing I would recommend to the collective West is this one. Set an example by condemning your military adventures, illegal economic restrictions, deadly colonial and neo-colonial wars, genocide, and robbery of indigenous peoples. Pay compensation to states and nations that have suffered from you. Such a step would bring us closer to having a more just world order that would have no place for anyone s self-proclaimed exceptionalism, he told the UN Security CouncilUN Security Council, commenting on Russia's military operation in Ukraine.
In recent months, Russia has seen a degree of hypocrisy coming from the West, according to Nebenzya. During the Ukraine conflict, Western countries suddenly remembered that there is such a thing as the international law, Russia's UN envoy argued.
When NATO attacked Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, international law was perceived as an annoying impediment. The collective West had to come up with exotic concepts such as humanitarian intervention war on terror, preventive strikes, and preventive strikes, as well as in futile attempts to justify their aggression against sovereign states.
He said Moscow had no information on whether or not US, UK or other military officers are allegedly responsible for war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. He added that the outcome is always the same: lots of casualties, no one held accountable even in disciplinary terms, to say nothing of criminal liability referring to what he called NATO atrocities. After Moscow's offensive against Ukraine in late February, Western countries accused Russia of war crimes, with US President Joe Biden saying in April that President Vladimir Putin is carrying out genocide. Moscow denies all of the allegations and has criticized the US for fueling the conflict.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February after Ukraine failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.