Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered "the most massive violations of human rights" in the world today, the head of the United Nations says, as the war pushes into its second year with no end in sight and tens of thousands dead.
Key points:
- The United Nations Human Rights Council convenes in Geneva, one year into the Ukraine war
- UN Secretary-General António Guterres tells the forum it is the moment to stand on the right side of history
- Russia did not attend the meeting
The Russian invasion "has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement", UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech to the UN-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, local time.
After failing to capture Kyiv in the opening weeks of the invasion on February 24 last year — and suffering a series of humiliating setbacks during the northern autumn — Russia has stabilised its front and is concentrating its efforts on capturing four provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine, meanwhile, hopes to use battle tanks and other new weapons pledged by the West to launch new counteroffensives and reclaim more of the occupied territory.
"Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties and terrible suffering," Mr Guterres said.
The heavy fighting for territory in eastern Ukraine was in sharp focus on Sunday at a Ukrainian field hospital treating wounded from the intense battle for the city of Bakhmut, which has been devastated.
A constant flow of battered and exhausted soldiers came in on stretchers.
Anatoliy — the chief of the medical service who provided only one name for security reasons — said his team treats dozens of soldiers every day and barely has time to eat.
"My medics work practically non-stop. Before the full-scale invasion, we had 50-60 wounded in a nine-month rotation and, now, sometimes we have more [than that] in one day," he told The Associated Press.
In his Geneva speech, Mr Guterres cited cases of sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and violations of the rights of prisoners of war that have been documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).
He decried how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — now 75 years old — has been "too often misused and abused".
"It is exploited for political gain and it is ignored, often, by the very same people," Mr Guterres said.
"Some governments chip away at it. Others use a wrecking ball."
"This is a moment to stand on the right side of history," he told the council, the UN's top human rights body.
Mr Guterres' remarks came as the Ukrainian military said that Russia had launched attacks with exploding drones in several regions of the country from late on Sunday until Monday morning, killing two people.
No conditions for 'peaceful settlement', Kremlin says
Russia withdrew from its UNHRC seat last year, amid a surge in international pressure over the war in Ukraine.
Dozens of high-level envoys at the Geneva meeting — many from Western countries — lashed out at Russia over its conduct of the war.
At the simultaneous Conference on Disarmament — another UN-backed body — delegates criticised Mr Putin's decision to suspend Russia's participation in the New START agreement with the United States, the last nuclear arms control agreement between Moscow and Washington.
Russia was not represented at the council, and its top envoy to the session was not expected to speak until Thursday.
However, Russian officials have shown little sign they may be reconsidering their attack on their neighbour.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "We aren't seeing any conditions for a peaceful settlement now."
Dmitry Medvedev — the deputy head of Russia's Security Council that is chaired by President Vladimir Putin — went a step further, once again raising the spectre of nuclear war and a nightmare outcome to Europe's biggest and deadliest conflict since World War II.
He chided the US and its allies for providing Ukraine with military and other support to help push back the Kremlin's forces.
Their longer-term aim, he claimed, was to break up Russia.
Mr Putin has also framed the war in those terms, saying it's an existential risk to Russia.
Fighting intensifies
In attacks on Sunday into Monday, Ukraine's General Staff said, Kyiv's forces shot down 11 out of 14 Iranian-made Shahed drones.
On Monday, Ukraine's presidential office said at least two civilians had been killed and nine others wounded by Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours.
It said intense fighting had continued around Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar in the Donetsk region, which have come under relentless Russian shelling.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the Russian offensive — which is aimed at securing control of eastern Ukraine — has effectively become bogged down while losing "huge numbers of weapons and ammunition".
Mr Zhdanov said the Ukrainian military, in turn, is building up forces for a future counteroffensive in the south while pummelling Russian positions and depots there.
"Ukraine has significantly intensified the shelling of Russian positions in the south, destroying roads and depots, which is an important condition for the success of a future counteroffensive," he said.
In other developments, the Russian military claimed its forces struck an electronic intelligence centre near Brovary, just east of Kyiv.
Russia's Defence Ministry also said that its forces struck a special operations centre of the Ukrainian armed forces near the western city of Khmelnytskyi.
The ministry did not say when the strikes were launched, and its claim could not be independently verified.
AP/Reuters