Russia is trying to return to the UN Human Rights Council: reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

Russia is trying to return to the UN Human Rights Council, from which it was expelled in April 2022 because of its full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Moscow justifies its claim to one of the two vacant seats for Eastern European states by seeking to "prevent the growing trend of the Human Rights Council becoming an instrument that serves the political will of one group of countries that punish disloyal governments for their independent domestic and foreign policies."

The election of members of the UN Human Rights Council for 2024-2026 will take place in October, CNN reports. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has already responded to the attempts of the terrorist state to return to this body despite the crime of aggression and the murder of Ukrainians.

According to CNN, Russia is now trying to return to the UN Human Rights Council: the international organization's website lists it as a candidate for election and claims one of the two seats reserved for Eastern European states on the Council on the basis of equitable geographical distribution. In addition to Russia, Albania and Bulgaria have so far announced their candidacies.

The two states that will be elected to the Council will replace Ukraine and the Czech Republic, which will leave the body at the end of 2023.

The journalists also got acquainted with a position paper that Russia sends to UN members to increase support. In it, the representatives of the aggressor state assure that they allegedly consider the Human Rights Council "a key body in the United Nations system" and claim that the Russian Federation "considers it important to prevent the growing trend of turning the Human Rights Council into an instrument that serves the political will of one group of countries that punish disloyal governments for their independent domestic and foreign policies."

"If elected, the Russian Federation will focus on this issue. We will firmly promote the principles of cooperation and strengthening of constructive, mutually respectful dialogue in the Council in order to find adequate solutions to human rights issues," the newspaper quoted the Russian document as saying.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has already responded to the attempts of the terrorist state to return to the Human Rights Council in the midst of the aggressive war against Ukraine.

"Russia is promoting its candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council. Let me remind you that last year it was stripped of its membership rights in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With this step, Russia is trying to prove that it can continue to grossly violate human rights, commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with impunity. Ukraine's position is clear: Russia should not be allowed to return to one of the key UN bodies until it is held accountable for all its crimes. The place of Russian war criminals is in the benches of the tribunal, not in the UN Human Rights Council," emphasized Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko.

Earlier, the UN confirmed the deaths of almost 10,000 Ukrainian civilians as a result of Russian aggression. Most of them, according to the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, died in the territories controlled by the Ukrainian government.

The UN also found that Russians tortured Ukrainian prisoners to death and raped women in the occupied territories , and did so on a massive and systematic scale. This is stated in the investigation of the Commission of Inquiry into the events in Ukraine.

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