UN chief points to 'massive' rights violations in Ukraine

Feb 28, 20230

Salvatore Di Nolfi, Keystone via AP count

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres adresses his statement, during the opening of the High-Level Segment of the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, Feb. 27, 2023.

GENEVA - 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 said Monday, as the war pushed into its second year with no end in sight and tens of thousands dead.

The Russian invasion ''has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement,'' U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech to the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva.

After failing to capture Kyiv in the opening weeks of the invasion on Feb. 24 last year and suffering a series of humiliating setbacks during the fall, Russia has stabilized the 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.

https://www.startribune.com/un-chief-points-to-massive-rights-violations-in-ukraine/600254714/