Statement by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine H.E. Mr. Sergiy Kyslytsya at the UN Security Council meeting on situation in Ukraine

As prepared

Mister President, distinguished members of the Security Council,

Let me start by expressing my gratitude to Special Representative Pramila Pratten, Natalya Karbowska of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund and Sherrie Rollins Westin of Sesame Workshop for their comprehensive presentations.

I would also like to thank the Albanian Presidency for organizing this meeting. We appreciate the commitment to keeping the issue of russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine at the top of the Security Council’s agenda.

Even if the Council is unable to take effective steps to respond to the most dangerous threat to international peace and security it is still important we gathered here today.

I reiterate in this regard that there is no other option but to resolve the problem of russia’s squatting in the Soviet permanent seat. The sooner the better as the squatter, being an aggressor and violator, threatens the stability of the entire construction.

We need a credible Council. We need efficient solutions.

I also recognize the representatives of Putin’s regime in the permanent seat of the Soviet Union.

It’s important that the russian delegation continues to show up in the Security Council meetings on Ukraine. As a sort of a pre-trial meetings they are valuable because they are on the record. Hence everything said by the accomplices of crimes can and will be used against them in court. Of course, they have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before they speak here for their own sake, and maybe they already do.

As the entire Ukraine is bleeding now.

The frontline, where the russian army continues to apply the most barbaric and inhumane methods of warfare.

The occupied territories, where Russians consolidate the practices of terror, neocolonialism and genocide.

All and any Ukrainian cities and villages could be a target for russian rockets. As happened with Kyiv yesterday.

Mr.President,

The battle for Donbas is now at its height with Severodonetsk being the main hotspot. The russian army spares no effort to ensure this city share the fate of Mariupol – total destruction to the ground.

Severedonetsk serves as further proof that russia aims to fully destruct Ukraine’s East and its industrial potential. Depopulation by forcible transfer of local residents is an essential part of the nefarious plans of the russian strategists.

That’s why Russians do not care at all about the fate of the civilian population on the frontline. Moreover, mass extermination of civilians has been a desired goal for Putin’s generals, a reason to be awarded by the Kremlin and praised by russian propaganda.

Distinguished colleagues,

Any war brings the most suffering to the most vulnerable - women and children, elderly people and persons with disabilities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no exception.

The savage cruelty of the Russian invaders has turned the lives of millions of Ukrainians into an endless nightmare. Up to 5 million people have been recorded across Europe as individual refugees from Ukraine, mostly women and children, remain abroad. Almost 12 million people have become IDPs.

We thank each and every friend who provides shelter for Ukrainians until the russian forces are pushed out of Ukraine.

And we remain extremely concerned about the destiny of those Ukrainians who have been forcefully transferred to russia.

As russia has confessed, more than 1 million Ukrainian citizens have been transferred to different regions of Russia, including more than 234 thousand children. Several thousand of them are orphans or deprived of parental care.

We strongly condemn the decision by Russia to simplify the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for Ukrainian orphans or children left without parental care.

This decision grossly violates the IV Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 1949, which obliges the occupying power not to change the civil status of children, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989.

Russia refuses to provide any information on those forcibly transferred to Ukrainian authorities or international organizations. We see a real danger to those people of becoming victims of human trafficking or exploitation and abuse.

We call upon the United Nations agencies to explore ways and means by which they can contribute more effectively to the protection of Ukrainian children affected by armed conflict and the facilitation of the rapid and safe return to Ukraine of those children who have been forcibly displaced or transferred to the Russian Federation.

As Ukrainian children remain among the most vulnerable to war crimes and crimes against humanity, we deem it necessary for the UN Member States to raise their voices for their protection and support.

Mr President,

Ukrainian law enforcement, NGOs and the media continue to record numerous cases of sexual violence committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. Complaints about sexual crimes committed by the invaders have been received in Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Chernihiv regions of Ukraine.

According to our Ministry of Interior minors and elderly women were among the victims of Russian rapists. Fatalities have also been registered.

The investigation of sexual crimes in the temporarily uncontrolled territories of Ukraine is currently complicated. Russian occupiers persist in "removing traces" by burning the bodies of tortured and raped civilians.

We commend the first mission to Ukraine of the members of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, which start tomorrow. The Commissioners are to visit several locations in Ukraine to get first-hand information on alleged human rights violations and abuses, and to meet with victims, witnesses and IDPs.

Distinguished members of the Security Council,

Ukraine remains committed to finding solutions to prevent a global food crisis and we are ready to create the necessary conditions to resume exports from the port of Odesa. The question is how to make sure that Russia does not abuse the trade route to attack the city of Odesa.

The question that has become more relevant following Sunday’s missile strike on Kyiv, when four rockets hit the facilities of Darnytsya Car Repair Plant. As always russia claimed it had destroyed military hardware, including tanks sent by our allies. In reality, the plant has focused on repairing grain carrier freight cars, used for railway transfers of grain to the Ukrainian seaports.

It means all putin’s fairy tales about his readiness “to facilitate Ukrainian wheat export” that he so eloquently tells his rare interlocutors remain too far-removed from reality.

Listening to putin, who says he will not use trade routes to attack Odesa, one should not forget he is the very same person who told German Chancellor Scholz and French President Macron he would not attack Ukraine – days before launching a full-scale invasion.

Increased pressure rather than premature and unjustified gratitude must be the common international response to putin’s empty promises.

We continue our work with the UN and partners to ensure the functioning of maritime routes for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products. As a first step, Russia must withdraw its naval forces in the maritime waters around Ukraine and provide security guarantees against attacks on ports and commercial convoys.

Mr. President,

Twenty per cent of Ukrainian territory remains occupied. The security and human rights situation there continue to rapidly worsen.

It is despicable that russia has resumed the staged shellings of the occupied cities of Donbas for propaganda purposes, as it did in 2014-2015. The recent shelling of the center of Donetsk on Saturday that came immediately after russian state media started promoting a narrative on “Ukrainian shellings of Donbas cities with Westerns weapons” serves as an example.

It is illustrative that many Donetsk residents, as follows from social networks, did not believe this fake and reported that the origin of the shelling was on the occupied territory.

Russia has never considered local residents to be trustworthy and its attitude towards the population of the part of Donbas occupied since 2014 speaks volumes in this regard.

Draft raids on the streets and apartments, forcible mobilization of all men who failed to hide – these are the sad realities of Donetsk, Luhansk and other cities of the occupied part of Donbas.

Ill-equipped, without any means of protection, they are thrown on the Ukrainian positions in the first lines. Serving as a cannon fodder and a shield for russian soldiers.

There is no doubt that the same practices will be applied towards the population of the territories occupied since February. If not liberated these territories will be turned by Russia into new strongholds for renewed attacks.

We reiterate therefore that any “concession” that some “well-wishers” advise now will be only the way to a new war. With the same scope for violence and closer to our western borders.

Ukraine as a nation, it’s genetic fond has been devastated multiple times in the course of at least last hundred years. Beginning with the Bolsheviks invasion and incorporation in the USSR in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Followed by the Stalin ordered genocide during the artificial Great Famine of 1932-33 also widely known as Holodomor, when up to 10 million Ukrainians were starved to death by the Soviet Army confiscating crops.

Followed by the invasion by the Soviet Army of Western Ukraine in 1939 as agreed between Stalin and Hitler, when hundreds of thousands fled their homes to Europe and the Americas, and thousands were executed if they chose to stay or could not run.

Continued by the annihilation when the the Second World War started and the Soviets were withdrawing and setting everything on fire everything not to let the advancing Nazi troops take advantage of it. Then by withdrawing Nazis putting on fire and destroying everything before the Soviets regained control.

Millions killed in the Second World War and in both Nazi and Soviet camps. Russification of Ukraine thereafter and until renewal of Independence.

The invasion of 2014 followed by the eight long years of war and eventual full-scale invasion of 2022 when millions fled abroad and couple of million deported or moved to Russia, where children are fostered or adopted in violation of international humanitarian right en mass.

There’s hardly any other European nation that has experienced such deep devastation by Bolsheviks-Stalin-Hitler and eventually Putler within such a short period of history.

Most if not all of it has been man made and executed on purpose. The lack of empathy or hypocrisy of some politicians in this context is appalling and is seen by many as the last nail in a coffin as Ukrainians may say.

Seventy seven years ago humankind united in its struggle to destroy evil. Dozens of millions of lives were lost in order for us to realize that appeasement and concessions to the aggressor do not work. History tends to repeat itself if its lessons are not learned.

I do hope it is not about us, about the United Nations. Putin’s russia must be defeated. For the sake of international peace and security. For the sake of the Ukrainian people, who pay the highest price now. For the sake of people throughout the world, in particular those depending on grain supplies from our region. And for the sake of the people of the Russia that should return to the family of democratic nations following its “deputinization” .

I thank you