Britain blocks UN webcast of meeting on Ukraine involving Russian commissioner

UNITED NATIONS – Britain has blocked the United Nations webcast of an informal Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday, at which Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights – whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) wants to arrest on war crimes charges – is due to speak.

The meeting will focus on “evacuating children from the conflict zone”, and Russia said on Tuesday that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually.

Such meetings are not held in the Security Council chamber, and all 15 council members have to agree to allow the meeting to be webcast by the UN.

The Hague-based ICC in March issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova,

accusing them of illegally deporting children from Ukraine

and the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb 24, 2022.

“She should not be afforded a UN platform to spread disinformation,” a spokesman for Britain’s UN mission in New York said in a statement.

“If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague.”

Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it took thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the war zone.

“Russia will from now on block UN webcasts of all similar meetings citing ‘UK censorship clause’,” Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy wrote on Twitter.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters in March that the informal meeting of UN Security Council members to be held on Wednesday had been planned long before the ICC announcement and was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Mr Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova.

Diplomats have said it is rare for a UN webcast to be blocked. However, in March, China blocked the UN webcast of a US-convened informal Security Council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea. REUTERS