Lubinets: All public actions of Russian Federation on human rights are just show
Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote about this on Facebook, Ukrinform reports.
According to him, Russia uses a number of topics, including human rights, to justify its crimes. Lubinets noted that this is becoming a convenient tool in Russian propaganda - both for the domestic audience and for other countries of the world. He stated that the goal of this is to reduce support for Ukraine by international partners and to worsen the reputation of the Ukrainian state.
"All the public actions of the aggressor country in terms of human rights are just another show," the Ombudsman is convinced.
The Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights believes that Ukraine needs to continue to clearly explain to other countries why Russian aggression cannot be justified and to fight the narratives of the terrorist country in the information space.
In his opinion, Ukraine should also not allow manipulations when the aggressor and the victim of aggression are assessed on the same scale, as it was previously seen in the reports of international organizations.
According to him, even as Ukraine defends its territorial integrity and independence, the Ukrainian side is protecting human rights, improving legislation and moving towards becoming a full member of the EU and NATO.
"Our partners see how we protect human rights and freedoms in concrete actions when they visit Ukraine. They can also see Russia's "protection" of human rights: destroyed towns and villages, destroyed housing and educational institutions, killed and wounded Ukrainians from enemy shelling," the Commissioner wrote.
He recalled that in 2014, the Russian Federation justified the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions with the rhetoric that Russia was allegedly forced to protect people in these territories.
"In 2022, the invasion was accompanied by the same theses: the Russian army allegedly came to our country to protect a part of the Ukrainian population that speaks Russian. However, there was no oppression of the Russian language in Ukraine. Therefore, such a position of the Russian Federation is just another cynicism," Lubinets said.
According to the ombudsman, the real reality is the torture of Ukrainians in the TOT just because they spoke Ukrainian.
"Unfortunately, we sometimes have to repeat the same things to be understood and remembered by the international community. Among them is the fact that for the Russian Federation, human rights exist only on paper, not in life. And the Russian Federation violates them, as well as the norms of international humanitarian law," the Ombudsman said.
As reported, human rights activists handed over to the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Violations in Ukraine the names of 53 civilians who were abducted by the occupiers in the south and taken to the temporarily occupied Simferopol.
