The United States accused Moscow of committing a war crime on Wednesday (September 7) by forcibly deporting Ukrainians to Russia and said it has information that members of President Vladimir Putin's administration are overseeing so-called filtration operations.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the U.N. Security Council that estimates from a variety of sources, including Moscow, indicate that Russian authorities have "interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported" between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians to Russia.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia described the council meeting on Wednesday, which was requested by the United States and Albania, as a "a new milestone in the disinformation campaign unleashed by Ukraine and its Western backers."
U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo described the accusations of forced displacement, deportation and filtration as "grave" and said such reports must be investigated with the cooperation of the competent authorities.
DiCarlo also appealed for unimpeded access for U.N. and Red Cross officials to all people detained during the Ukraine war, adding that this "includes access to places of internment of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees" in Russia.
Britain expressed concern Russia was seeking to change the "demographic makeup" of parts of Ukraine.
Senior U.N. human rights official Ilze Brands Kehris told the Security Council that the United Nations had "verified that Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups subject civilians to so-called 'filtration'."
She also said that U.N. human rights officials had documented that men and women perceived as having ties with Ukrainian armed forces or state institutions, or as having pro-Ukrainian or anti-Russian views, were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance.
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