🎙️ Statement by Ms. Iulia Zhdanova, Head of the Delegation of the Russian Federation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, at the 101st joint plenary meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation and Permanent Council

Vienna, July 15, 2026

Subject: The OSCE Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security: Conflict-Related Human Rights Violations

🇷🇺 While conducting the special military operation to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine the Russian Armed Forces strictly adhere to the norms and principles of IHL, including the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and its Protocols, as well as the relevant provisions of the Russian national legislation.

‼️ Pursuant to Order No. 95 of 2019, of the MInistry of Defence of the Russian Federation, Russia traditionally attaches particular importance to the military and political education of the military, including on IHL, as one of the key elements of legal awareness.

📌 On 19 May, 2026, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the #UN Andrey Melnik stated at the #UN Security Council that Ukraine 'never targets civilians', but 'exclusively military facilities strictly adhering to the international humanitarian law and its provisions.' Such a statement is nothing short of a lie.

‼️ The Kiev regime is desperately cashing in on the blank cheque for atrocities in Russian regions handed to it by its Western patrons. Drones are raining down on the peaceful neighbourhoods of our cities, levelling apartment blocks, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals. Ambulances, passenger buses, and lifeline infrastructure are being hit with chilling precision.

🔼 What happened in August 2024, when neo-Banderite forces stormed into Russia's Kursk Region and seized part of it, was brutality on a scale never seen before. The Ukrainian militants recorded every vile act on camera and gleefully plastered it all over the internet, unspeakable torture of defenceless civilians, looting, abductions, and cold-blooded executions.

‼️ The true neo-Banderite face of the Kiev regime was laid bare on 22 May, when enemy drones struck the academic block and dormitory of the Lugansk State Pedagogical University in Starobelsk.The attack claimed the lives of 21 children and left 42 others injured.

🗒️ The first six months of this year saw seven large-scale prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine, bringing 1,575 of our fighters back home. Three families have been reunited, and every last civilian from the Kursk Region illegally held by Ukraine is now free. Each of these homecomings is both a triumph of a difficult painstaking humanitarian effort, calibrated down to the smallest detail, and a moment of overwhelming relief for the families who have endured months of anguish and uncertainty.

‼️ At the OSCE FSC, on multiple occasions we have shared substantiated evidence with the participating States concerning torture and mistreatment of the Russian servicemen by Ukrainian forces, nationalist formations, and foreign mercenaries.
Neo-Banderites are terrorising the families of prisoners of war. They call them, show them footage of their loved ones being abused, describe the suffering they are enduring, briefly let them hear their voices, and demand money.

🔺 The use of inhumane tactics against civilians and POWs by Zelensky regime is no secret in the West. But to acknowledge the neo-Banderites' flagrant violations of core IHL principles would be to admit that the strategy of backing Kiev unconditionally and fuelling the conflict at all costs has failed.

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