Russia Calls Emergency UN Security Council Meeting on Starobelsk Attack, Says ‘This Is a War Crime’

New York — Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday following the attack in Starobelsk, branding the incident a war crime. Nebenzia stated, “Today we have convened an emergency UNSC meeting in connection to yet another horrific terrorist attack perpetrated by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime against Russian civilians.”

He informed that in the early hours of May 22, the Ukrainian army used four fixed-wing drones to launch a targeted strike on the administrative buildings and dormitory of the Starobelsk College of the Lugansk State Pedagogical University. According to existing reports, at the time of the incident, there were 86 students aged 14 to 18 and one staff member in the dormitory building. As a result, the five-storey building collapsed down to the second floor. As of 3 p.m., it had been confirmed that six people had died, and more than 40 children had been wounded to varying degrees. Noting that the number is unfortunately likely to rise, he said that a number of children remain in critical condition in hospital, and the search for missing people continues, with children still buried under the rubble.

The Russian Ambassador stated, “Thus, this was a deliberate strike targeting a civilian facility where children live and study; this strike was carried out at nighttime when the dormitory was full, and it was clearly perpetrated with the aim of incurring the highest possible number of casualties. Under international humanitarian law, this constitutes a war crime.”

Nebenzia stated that this could by no means have been an accidental strike. He said, “There were three waves of drones that hit the same location. Neither could the UAV strike on the college have been the result of air defence or radio electronic warfare, as was immediately claimed by Kiev. None of those inside the building were or could have been taking part in hostilities, and there are no military facilities in the vicinity of the college. This was an attack targeting sleeping children, and this is yet another testament to the craven, terrorist, and anti-human nature of the Kiev regime.”

The Russian Ambassador claimed that long-range weapons, including UAVs, supplied to the Kiev regime by NATO countries are being carried out with technical assistance from foreign specialists from well-known NATO States. He stated that they have verifiable information that Western capitals are providing the Ukrainian armed forces with intelligence and assisting them with targeting.

Nebenzia presented figures showing that in April alone, at least 100 civilians, including 8 children, were killed as a result of criminal acts by Ukrainian militants, and 667 people, including 34 minors, were injured. Over the past week, 234 Russian citizens were affected by constant shelling and drone strikes by Ukrainian nationalists, of whom 203 people were wounded, including 18 children, and 31 people were killed, including 2 children.

Calling on international organisations, national governments, and the global community to give a frank assessment of the criminal actions by the Zelensky regime and to strongly condemn the bloody terrorist attack in Starobelsk, Nebenzia warned, “Silence would be tantamount to complicity in the brutal acts by the Kiev terrorists and indifference to the plight of all innocent children who were murdered and injured.”