(Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.N. was turning a blind eye to excesses committed by Ukrainian forces in their incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, launched last month.
Lavrov, in an interview with Russia’s TASS news agency on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York that was published early on Wednesday, said Ukrainian “terrorist groups” were using Western weapons to commit indiscriminate acts in Kursk.
“It is there that they bomb homes every day, bomb social institutions, peaceful citizens moving in their cars to safer places,” he told the news agency.
“I have not heard any voices from U.N. representatives responsible for human rights, including, of course, the secretary general,” he added, referring to U.N. Secretary Antonio Guterres.
Ukraine and human rights organisations have accused Russia of indiscriminate bombings of civilians and other atrocities since it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
Kyiv says it is defending itself against an imperial-style war of conquest designed to erase its national identity. Russia describes its action as a special operation to protect its own security against a hostile West.
Ukrainian forces poured over the border into Kursk region in early August, with officials saying they captured large chunks of territory and some 100 settlements.
The Russian military has said in recent weeks that it has recaptured some of those towns and villages. Russia, which earlier said it was willing to hold talks with Ukraine if Kyiv withdrew its forces from four regions annexed by Russia, now says there can be no talks while troops remain in Kursk.
In his comments to TASS, Lavrov also warned Eastern European countries, Soviet allies during the Cold War and now part of NATO and the European Union, that leaders of Western countries disdained them.
“Eastern European countries now under the wing of NATO or the roof of the European Union must understand how their masters feel about them,” he was quoted as saying.
“They don’t trust them. They don’t even want to let them anywhere near anything approaching significant job positions.”
Lavrov also told TASS that more and more countries were rejecting the notion of the U.S. dollar as a reference currency once vaunted as a “world-wide asset” by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
“Where is all this now? Now people are either running from the dollar or, in the case of those too deeply immersed in the system are trying gradually to reduce their dependence,” he said.
(Reporting by Ronald Popeski; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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