On April 13, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made another statement on Ukraine via his Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric. It concerns the developments in Sumy. He has accused of the April 13 missile attack, which allegedly “continues a devastating pattern of similar assaults on Ukrainian cities and towns.” We are perplexed by such assessments by the UN Secretary-General. We would like to remind everyone that since the beginning of the special military operation Russian forces have never deliberately delivered, are not delivering and will not deliver strikes on civilian population. As the Russian Defence Ministry invariably points out, our targets are always and exclusively military facilities.

The UN Secretary-General also reiterated the UN’s support to meaningful efforts towards peace that fully upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, in line with the UN Charter, international law, and relevant UN resolutions. As you can see, he never mentioned the right of nations to self-determination. This is yet another proof of Mr Guterres’s selective approach to the provisions of the UN Charter. In this connection, we would like to point out that the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, which was adopted by consensus at the UN General Assembly in 1970, sealed a connection between the principles of the UN Charter, which must be applied in their entirety and as a whole.

In addition, the Declaration states that the principle of territorial integrity shall be applied to all states who are conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of self-determination of peoples and are thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory. It is clear to everyone that the current Kiev regime does not comply with these criteria. Zelensky’s gang has been systematically and flagrantly infringing on the fundamental freedoms of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking citizens. We have to state that the UN Secretary-General, acting contrary to Article 1 of the UN Charter, which calls for promoting and encouraging respect for language, religious and other human rights, continues to shield the Kiev regime’s open disregard for the principles of self-determination of nations and human rights.

Mr Guterres demonstrated a similar approach when he disregarded Russia’s appeals in the context of investigation into the provocation in Bucha, which Kiev orchestrated three years ago. We have publicly appealed to the UN Secretary-General on numerous occasions to at least help encourage Kiev to publish the lists of those whose bodies the Western media demonstrated to the world in early April 2022 to the accompaniment of hysterical accusations against Russia. In September 2024, a relevant official request, which was prepared by Russia’s Investigative Committee together with the Prosecutor General’s Office, was submitted to the UN Secretariat via the Permanent Mission of Russia in New York. In January and April 2025, we urged the UN Secretariat to speed up reply to our request. All our efforts were in vain; we have not received a substantive answer to our request.

We again call on Antonio Guterres and his Secretariat to take an honest stance, to prevent biased comments in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, and to stop discrediting our country and covering up the Kiev regime’s crimes.