The Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Bucharest Valery Kuzmin was extremely concerned about the attitude of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Bohdan Aureska, now a judge of the International Court of Justice of the United Nations in The Hague, who, according to him, accused Russia, “foaming at the mouth”. for mass murders in Buchi. Kuzmin emphasized that bilateral relations between Romania and Russia have further deteriorated in the context of the war in Ukraine, News.ro reports.

• “After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, Romania was one of the first to identify this operation as aggression and began to blame Russia with foam at the mouth. We can also mention the incident in Bucha, I don’t want to say who exactly, but they blamed Russia, directly, without any investigation,” Valery Kuzmin, ambassador of the Russian Federation in Bucharest, said on Wednesday through an interpreter. , at a press briefing.

A Moscow diplomat was concerned that Romania had turned to international justice for war crimes in Buchi, and continues to maintain that there is no evidence that the Russian military killed civilians.

• “There was never any evidence either then or now, we were never given a list of people who, according to them, were killed by the Russian military,” the ambassador said.

• “An outstanding diplomat from Romania, who now holds a seat at the International Court of Justice of the United Nations (Bogdan Aurescu – no), then foaming at the mouth, without any evidence, accused Russia of what happened in Bucha, and promised Russia that he would bring it to court and so further,” the ambassador scolded.

Instead, he claims that everything that happened in Bucha “was organized by PR agencies from Ukraine and Great Britain.”

Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of war crimes in Buch, charges the Kremlin denies.

The charges relate to the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by Russian armed forces during the fighting and occupation of the town of Bucha, in the first part of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Photo and video evidence of the massacre emerged on April 1, 2022, after Russian troops retreated from the city.

According to local authorities, 458 bodies were recovered from the city, including nine children under the age of 18. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented the unlawful killing, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians.

The photographs show the bodies of civilians lined up with their hands tied behind their backs, shot at close range.

Ukraine has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate what happened as part of an ongoing investigation into the invasion to determine whether war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed.

The former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, Bohdan Aurescu, strongly condemned the atrocities committed by Russia in Buch and other Ukrainian cities in 2022, and added that Romania fully supports the thorough investigation of these facts by the UN International Court of Justice.

• “I strongly condemn the atrocities committed in Buch and other cities of Ukraine as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. All perpetrators of such international crimes must be brought to justice. Romania fully supports the thorough investigation of these facts by the International Court of Justice,” Bohdan Aurescu wrote in April 2022 on Twitter.

Speaking about the deterioration of bilateral relations between Romania and Russia, Ambassador Valery Kuzmin noted that the political-diplomatic dialogue is practically frozen, and he disapprovingly recalled the mutual reduction of diplomatic personnel and the closing of Russian cultural centers over the past year. At the same time, he recalled that Romania announced that it would train Ukrainian pilots for F-16 fighters, which, the diplomat stressed, are capable of carrying missiles with a range of 500 km and nuclear missiles.

According to him, during the past year, the Russian side drew the attention of the Romanian authorities several times to the inadmissibility of persistent military assistance to the “criminal neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” Our efforts were aimed at warning the Romanian authorities about the possible use of American fighter jets from the territory of Romania in future military operations – these planes will soon be transferred to Kyiv, recently there were even news that some of them are already deployed in Ukraine – against the population or the armed forces of the Russian Federation , this fact will be considered by Russia as a direct intervention in the Ukrainian conflict,” Valery Kuzmin said.