The UN confirmed on Monday to have received a letter from the US government warning that Russian forces have drawn up a list of Ukrainian citizens to kill thembut noted that he cannot corroborate that information.
“The letter was indeed received from the US by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights” in Geneva, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, told a news conference.
Dujarric, however, stated that the UN has “no way to corroborate or rule out the information contained in the letter” and that it does not have “independent information”, while stressing that its role is to “circulate” this type of letters as they have done before.
Guterres’ spokesman also recalled that the UN has humanitarian personnel deployed in Ukraine, in addition to a mission to closely monitor the human rights situation in the country.
“They send us information on a regular basis, so we can only talk about what we know,” he insisted.
Dujarric, who on behalf of Guterres called on several occasions for the cessation of hostilities and for the ceasefire to be respected, in addition to using only diplomatic channels to try to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, also confirmed that he is sending more UN staff to the region.
“There are new personnel that are being sent to support UN operations in Ukraine,” confirmed Dujarric, who did not give numbers on the number of people he is adding to his Ukrainian mission, although he specified that the organization currently has more of 1,500 workers in the country, of which 149 are international and 1,361 are local.
This Monday, The New York Times reported that the United States Government had sent a letter to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights with “credible information” that Russian forces have drawn up a list of Ukrainian citizens to kill them or send them to detention camps after an attack, invasion and occupation of the country by Moscow.
Likely targets would be people who oppose Russian actionsincluding dissidents from Russia and Belarus living in Ukraine, journalists, anti-corruption activists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities and the LGBT community, according to the newspaper.
The tension between Russia and the US and its Western allies reached maximum heights this weekend and, while Washington assures that Moscow will invade Ukraine in the coming days, diplomatic contacts continue to take place to avoid a conflict.
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