Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that a report on the events in Bucha would be presented during meetings of the United Nations General Assembly.
The report will be presented by the Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Zakharova said the documents were also planned to be distributed at the “Fake News Dialogue 4.0” forum.
Zakharova said Russia had been asking UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for several years to share the lists of those who died in Bucha. She claimed that Guterres’s failure to respond to these requests reinforced Moscow’s assessment that the events were a provocation.
The Russian spokeswoman claimed that developments around Bucha were part of a wide-ranging information campaign. Zakharova accused Western countries, particularly the United Kingdom, of distorting the events and alleged that this distortion was intended to disrupt the Russia-Ukraine negotiations being conducted in Istanbul.
Zakharova, who claimed that the figures and information held by Russia showed that the narrative surrounding Bucha had been devised on the instructions of the British government, also criticized Western media. She said some outlets had published information about developments in Bucha without carrying out additional verification.
Allegations against the UN leadership
Zakharova cited Guterres’s failure to share the lists of those who died as grounds for alleging that the UN Secretariat had violated the principle of impartiality and supported an anti-Russian campaign. She claimed that the UN Secretariat would have to explain its involvement in the information campaign surrounding Bucha.
The Russian spokeswoman also criticized a report published in December 2022 by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
Call for an independent investigation to continue
Zakharova announced that Russia would continue calling for an independent investigation by international media organizations and fact-checking organizations, taking new information about the events in Bucha into account.
