(Geneva) The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, visiting Ukraine, took refuge in an underground shelter in Kyiv on Monday due to missile strikes, the UN said.
This is the first time that a High Commissioner has visited Ukraine since the Russian invasion, launched on February 24. His predecessor, the Chilean Michelle Bachelet, did not go there.
“I was about to meet human rights defenders on my second day in Kyiv, and I had to move this meeting here, to this shelter […] because the sirens sounded,” Volker Türk said in a short video sent to AFP.
“And while we were having this discussion here in this shelter, there was a wave of missile attacks against Ukraine, some of which landed near Kyiv. You can imagine what this means for the population. It has almost become a new normal, but it is having a huge impact on civilians, and it must stop,” he added.
On Twitter, the Austrian posted a photo of the meeting.
We also see his spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani as well as Matilda Bogner, who heads the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
The interview was “planned in a normal meeting room, the aerial anti-aircraft sirens went off, we all moved to an underground shelter”, Ms.me Shamdasani.
In another video later posted on Twitter, the High Commissioner is seen walking through snowy streets, past destroyed buildings. He lays a wreath of red carnations in front of a cross and meditates in front of photos of what appear to be victims.
“I am currently in Ukraine in solidarity with the victims of this horrible war, which was caused by the invasion of the Russian Federation on February 24. I am here to express my solidarity, especially in these harsh winter months,” he explained.
“War is senseless. Killings of this kind are totally unacceptable and senseless,” he said, before asking “those who did this” to stop and to respect international humanitarian law and human rights.
Warning sirens sounded across Ukraine on Monday as a new wave of bombings took place in freezing temperatures. Several Ukrainian cities have thus been subjected to new water and electricity cuts after Russian strikes which also killed at least two people, according to local and regional authorities.
A close collaborator of the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, the Austrian Volker Türk took up his new duties as High Commissioner on 17 October in Geneva.
He began a four-day official visit to the country on Sunday, at the invitation of the government, according to the UN.
Besides Kyiv, the High Commissioner has planned to visit the regions of Kharkiv (north-east), Izium (east) and Uzhhorod (west).
He is expected to meet during his visit with senior national and local officials and representatives of civil society, as well as representatives of victims, including relatives of civilians or prisoners of war who are missing or have been captured.