Zelenskyy compares Russia to Isis, calls for Nuremberg-style trials in UN address

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks via remote feed during a meeting of the UN Security Council. Picture: AP Photo/John Minchillo

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared Russia to so-called Isis in an address to the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

The Ukrainian President accused Russia of committing the “most terrible war crimes” since the Second World War as he called for trials akin to those held after the defeat of the Nazis.

In a graphic address on Tuesday, Mr Zelenskyy accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s forces of creating “mass starvation” and shooting and raping civilians.

He called for those responsible to be “brought to justice” in a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials.

Mr Zelesnkyy said he had visited the “recently liberated” city of Bucha and he said there was “not a single crime that they (Russian forces) would not commit”.

He said the Russian troops had killed entire families and tried to burn their bodies, and that people were shot in the street or thrown into wells.

He told the Security Council women were raped and killed in front of their children, while some people had their tongues “pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them”.

He said: “This is no different from other terrorists such as Daesh who occupy some territories, and here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.” 

Mr Zelenskyy added: “They support hatred at the level of the state and seek to export it to other countries through their system of propaganda and political corruption.”

The Ukrainian president said the world has yet to see what the Kremlin’s troops have done in other regions after evidence of atrocities was unearthed after their withdrawal from Bucha, near Kyiv.

Addressing the Security Council via a translator, Mr Zelenskyy said: “Today, as a result of Russia’s actions in our country, in Ukraine the most terrible war crimes of all times, that we’ve seen since the end of World War Two, have been committed.

“Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes, they are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation.

They deliberately shoot columns of civilians on the road trying to escape from the hostilities.

“They even deliberately blow up shelters where civilians hide from air strikes. They are deliberately creating conditions in the temporarily occupied territories so that as many civilians as possible are killed there.

“The massacre in our city of Bucha is unfortunately only one of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for the past 41 days, and there are many similar cities, similar places, where the world has yet to learnt he full truth… dozens of other Ukrainians communities, each of them similar to Bucha.”

He also suggested that the safety which was supposed to be guaranteed by the existence of the UN Security Council had not materialised.

The Ukrainian president said: “So where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee? It’s not there.

“Although there is a Security Council and so where is the peace?” 

Mr Zelenskyy told the meeting: “It is obvious that the key institution of the world which must ensure the coercion of any aggressor to peace simply cannot work effectively.”

He told the Council that the United Nations needed to be reformed to deal with Russian aggression.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has a veto with which it is able to block attempts to censure the Kremlin.

“This undermines the whole architecture of global security, it allows them to go unpunished so they are destroying everything that they can,” Mr Zelenskyy said.

“Russia’s leadership feels like colonisers in ancient times, they need our wealth, our people – Russia has already deported hundreds of thousands of our citizens to their country, they abducted more than 2,000 children.” 

He told the United Nations that Russia’s forces were engaged in “widescale looting” from food to gold earrings “pulled out and covered with blood”.