Gatilov says Russian support for human rights violations by the West is growing

More and more developing countries support the viewpoint of human rights violations by the West and its allies, Russia's permanent representative to the UN in Geneva Gennady Gatilov said on December 28.

"Thanks to the explanatory work carried out by the post mission, more and more developing states support our point of view regarding serious human rights violations by Western countries and their satellites," he said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

The diplomat called indicative in this regard the growing number of co-authors of the statements that Russia initiated in 2024 in the UN Human Rights Council.

According to him, this trend concerns, among other things, documents on the situation in Ukraine, on the inadmissibility of politicization of sports, religious freedoms, economic, social and cultural rights.

Earlier, on 18 December, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the statement by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the killing of the head of the Russian Armed Forces' RCBZ troops, Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, and his assistant did not allegedly violate the norms of humanitarian law as evidence of venality. She emphasized that OHCHR should have condemned the incident fully and without reservations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin back in December 2023 pointed to the degradation of the international human rights system due to the engagement of its institutions by Western countries. Russian diplomats also drew the attention of the UNHRC in March that Russian citizens and compatriots in Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine were suffering from this.