GENEVA, April 3. /TASS/. The silence of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk in response to calls for condemning the March killings of Russian journalists could amount to complicity in the Kiev regime’s crimes, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and Other International organizations in Geneva Gennady Gatilov said.
"A sufficient amount of time has passed since these tragic events for the relevant international human rights bodies to respond to them accordingly," he noted in a statement published on the Russian mission’s website.
The Russian envoy pointed out that on April 2, he "sent Mr. Turk an official letter," in which he "once again described in detail the attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces on our correspondents." "Today, a similar appeal from the Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament - TASS) Commission on Information Policy and Media Interaction, Alexey Pushkov, was submitted to both the high commissioner and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan," Gatilov went on to say.
"In these documents, we reminded the UN human rights defenders that, in accordance with international law, journalists are considered civilians, and their killings are classified as war crimes. We called for a categorical condemnation of these and other targeted attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces on Russian media representatives," the Russian envoy emphasized.
"We expect an appropriate response from Mr. Turk and Ms. Khan. After all, its absence would amount to their silent complicity in the crimes of the Kiev regime," Gatilov concluded.
Russia’s Channel One said on March 26 that its war correspondent Anna Prokofyeva had been killed in the Belgorod Region, and her cameraman Dmitry Volkov had suffered injuries. Earlier, six people were killed in a Ukrainian strike on the Lugansk People’s Republic, which involved HIMARS rockets. Alexander Fedorchak, reporter for the Izvestia newspaper, Andrey Panov, cameraman for the Zvezda TV channel, and Alexander Sirkeli, the channel’s driver, were among those killed.