UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th May, 2021) Anna Tuv, a survivor of systematic bombardment by the Ukrainian military in the town of Gorlovka in the Donbas region, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday the international community has been reluctant to help investigate and bring to justice perpetrators of war crimes against the civilian population there.
On Wednesday, Russia organized an informal meeting of the UN Security Council dubbed "Odessa Seven Years After: Neo-Nazism and Violent Nationalism as Drivers of Conflict in Ukraine."
On May 26, 2015, the house in the city of Horlovka, where Tuv lived with her husband and three children, was bombed by the artillery of Kiev's armed forces. As a result, Tuv's husband and her 11-year-old daughter died in the shelling.
Tuv herself lost her hand in the shelling and two of her children were injured: her two-year-old son sustained multiple wounds, while her newborn baby suffered a concussion. In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.
"I would like to address to reasonable European organization and explain that without their help people will continue perishing, children will continue dying," she said.
Tuv said the Ukrainian military is perpetrating "a mass genocide" by ethnically cleansing the Russian population in the Donbas region.
"When I am invited to speak at Federal channels, and I ask questions to the Ukrainian authorities on how many more victims should there be for them to stop, they tell me that we are genetic trash... that ethnic Russians must leave, liberate the territory, otherwise we will be eliminated," she said.
Tuv noted she had testified before international organizations about the tragedy that happened to her family; however, she did not receive any reaction.
"Unfortunately, today, there are 8,000 claims like this in the Donetsk Republic alone. Of these, 2,600 were sent to the International Criminal Court and 5,500 to the European Court of Human Rights. No reaction," she said.
Tuv emphasized the most troubling aspect for her is that the Ukrainian authorities do not investigate crimes committed by the military in the Donbas region.
"We are all listed on the 'Mirotvorets' website, where the Ukrainian government introduced me as an accomplice of the occupiers and terrorists. We are all dubbed 'separatists,'" Tuv said.
The conflict in southeastern Ukraine, where the Ukrainian military launched a special operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in 2014, has resulted in the killing of thousands of people.
The Normandy Four format, which includes Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine, was established in June 2014 to mediate the conflict after the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known together as Donbas, proclaimed independence following what they considered to be a coup in Kiev in February of that year. Despite several ceasefire agreements reached under the Normandy format, the Donbas conflict continues.
