Russian Ambassador Says UN Shows Double Standards On Missile Attacks In Kyiv Ukraine

Efforts to evacuate victims due to Russian airstrikes. (Twitter/@ZelenskyyUa)

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya told reporters UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres showed double standards in his reaction to the latest incident where a missile hit a hospital in Kyiv.

"I visited the UN Secretary General after the incident and gave him the same quote as the one I read to you, telling him this is clearly a double standard, when Russian territory was attacked, and civilian objects were attacked, the reaction was very weak. However, when something happened in Ukraine, the Secretary General of the United Nations and its spokesman rushed to condemn Russia right away," Ambassador Nebenzya said in response to reporters' questions., reported TASS July 10.

Russia launched airstrikes on the territory of the capital Kyiv and a number of other Ukrainian cities on Monday afternoon. One of the missiles, said local authorities, hit a major children's hospital in Gaza.

In response, the UN Secretary-General through its spokesman Stephane Dujarric de la Rivière said in a statement on the UN website, condemning the Russian Federation's missile attacks that hit housing and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, including in the cities of Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and Pokrovsk.

"The incident where the missile hit the Okhmadyt National Children's Special Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine's largest pediatric facility, and at other medical facilities in the Dniprovsky district in the capital, was shocking," he said.

"Redirecting attacks on civilians and civilian objects is prohibited by international humanitarian law, and such attacks are unacceptable and must be ended immediately," he said.

Meanwhile, rescue teams ended operations at children's hospitals on Tuesday morning. Elsewhere in the Ukrainian capital, five bodies were found from the rubble of the building where 12 people died, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

The death toll stood at 33 in Kyiv and 11 in the Dniproptrosk region, officials said, bringing the total to 44.

Separately, the Prosecutor's Office at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said a team of investigators visited the hospital's attack site on Tuesday, warning that those responsible for the attack on civilian objects could be prosecuted.

In Geneva, the Jasarevic Pull from the World Health Organization (WHO) said the hospital strike was one of 1,882 attacks on health services in Ukraine that have killed a total of 150 people in the conflict that has lasted more than two years.