The West ought to condemn its own military adventures and pay out compensation to those who have suffered from its actions, Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Thursday, according to news agency TASS.
“I would recommend to the collective West this one thing. If you want to condemn aggression — start with yourselves. Set an example by condemning your own military adventures, illegal economic restrictions, deadly colonial and neo-colonial wars, genocide, and robbery of indigenous peoples,” he told the UN Security Council, commenting on the accusations regarding Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
“Start paying off compensations to states and nations that suffered from you. Such a step would indeed bring us closer to having a more just world order that would have no place for anyone’s self-proclaimed exceptionalism,” the diplomat added.
According to Nebenzya, in recent months, Russia has witnessed “a transcendent degree of hypocrisy” coming from the West. During the Ukraine conflict, Western countries “suddenly recalled that there is such a thing as the international law,” Russia’s UN envoy argued.
“When NATO was attacking Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, international law was perceived only as an annoying impediment. In futile attempts to justify their aggression against sovereign states, the collective West had to come up with exotic concepts, such as ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘war on terror’, ‘preventive strikes’,” Nebenzya continued.
He said that Moscow had no information on whether US, UK or other military officers that are allegedly responsible for war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have faced charges. “The outcome is always the same: lots of casualties, and no one held accountable (even in disciplinary terms, to say nothing of criminal liability),” he added, referring to what he called “NATO atrocities.”
Is he wrong? I don’t think so.
US Wars
?