Vladimir Ogryzko13:02, 14.09.24

As a result of shelling by Russian occupiers of Verolyubovka in Donetsk Oblast, three full-time employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross , citizens of Ukraine, were killed. The ICRC workers were in a truck that was transporting humanitarian aid.

Will there be a harsh reaction from the Red Cross and other international humanitarian organizations to this shelling in the Donetsk region? No. There will be no reaction, because their concerned neutrality presupposes precisely this approach.

Don’t expect any harsh statements. The most they’ll say is that we decided to talk to one of the sides. And the fact that Ukrainians died doesn’t really bother them.

I heard that the head of the Red Cross (Mirjana Spoljaric-Egger) is supposed to be in Moscow, to meet with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This information was available before these tragic events. However, the very fact that she is coming to a war criminal and will “shake hands” with him there speaks to the essence of this figure.

It seems to me that the modern system of many international organizations is a sign of degradation of the very idea of ​​these structures as such. If the head of the ICRC goes to an aggressor country and tries to talk about something there, it means that international “humanitarian” organizations have reached their limits.

The ICRC prescribes such statutes for itself – as, by the way, does the UN – that they should not interfere in any events of this nature. They are neutral. And since they are neutral, they do not determine whose side is right, who is the aggressor and who is the victim of aggression. They simply state: look, we saw that three Ukrainian citizens were killed, yes, they worked for us, but “it happened”.

That’s all, the maximum you can count on. Nothing serious will happen anymore.

Would the reaction have been harsher if these had been citizens of other countries? It is hard to say. I think that in principle, no. Perhaps the country whose citizens would have died (if it had been a Western country) could have done so bilaterally, saying that the norms of international humanitarian law must be observed. But it is unlikely that this would have changed the essence of the ICRC’s approach.

That is, the question is not who works in this Cross from which country. The question is that the Cross itself is such and such – nothing.

It now looks like such organizations as the ICRC and the UN need to be re-established so that their approach changes. And they need to be re-established without countries that violate international law. But, unfortunately, Russia, as the epicenter of global evil, still maintains this system of dysfunctional organizations because it is beneficial to it. As soon as this pseudo-empire of evil disappears, its allied countries (China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, etc.) will find it difficult to resist the civilized world. And perhaps this will happen, in my opinion, when Russia suffers defeat, when it goes down in history, and in its place normal independent states arise that will not have aggression as their goal, but normal socio-economic development.

But all this is still ahead, not now. After all, unfortunately, the West does not want to have a collapsed Russia. For now, everyone is happy for it to remain, for all these fairy tales of the Russian pseudo-opposition about the wonderful RF of the future to exist. That is why Yulia Navalnaya is accepted everywhere in the West, and her speeches are perceived positively when she says absolute stupidities of an imperial nature…

So we have to wait for now.

Volodymyr Ohryzko, diplomat, head of the Center for Russian Studies, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

(C)UNIAN 2024