Representatives of several Security Council members walked out of a meeting on Ukraine organized by Russia on Wednesday after a video conference by Russia’s children’s commissioner, who has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), reported AFP.

Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of “kidnapping” more than 16,000 children from Ukraine since the start of the offensive a year ago.

And in March, the International Criminal Court issued a historic warrant for the arrest of President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, considering them responsible for the “war crime of illegal deportation” of Ukrainian minors.

Russia claims to have “rescued” these children from hostilities and implemented procedures to reunite them with their families.

“Ukrainian propaganda and Western media deliberately and thoroughly distorted the situation, saying that saving these children from the bombings was a crime,” Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasyl Nebenzia, said on Wednesday, assuring that the meeting was planned “long before” the “stupid” decision of the ISS .

Ukraine’s allies did not send any of their ambassadors – which is not unusual for such informal meetings outside the Security Council hall.

As soon as Maria Lvova-Belova appeared on the screen and condemned the “campaign to discredit” her country, representatives of the USA, Great Britain, Malta and Albania left the hall, and representatives of the other 11 members of the Security Council remained.

“We spoke against this woman (…) accused of war crimes, who is involved in the deportation and abduction of children from their homes,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the press before the meeting.

“That is why we joined the UK to prevent UNTV from being used to give it an international platform to spread disinformation and try to defend its terrible actions in Ukraine,” she added.

The British delegation announced on Tuesday that it had blocked the broadcast of the event on the UN website.

In a joint statement, about 50 countries, including France, the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Ukraine and Guatemala, accused Russia of “abusing its powers and privileges as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to spread disinformation about its mass abductions and illegal forced deportations of thousands of Ukrainian children.” .

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