Ukraine invites UN and Red Cross to Russia’s Kursk region

Kremlin slams invitation as ‘pure provocation’ as it prepares to welcome Red Cross chief.

Ukraine says it has asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to verify the situation in areas of Russia’s Kursk region seized by Kyiv.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Monday that he had instructed his ministry to extend formal invitations to the organisations. The invitation is intended to “prove [Ukraine’s] adherence to international humanitarian law”, he added, in a clear reference to numerous atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine since they invaded in February 2022.

It was not immediately clear whether the UN or ICRC had responded to the invitation.

Yesterday, while on a visit to our warriors in the Sumy region, I instructed @MFA_Ukraine to officially invite the UN and ICRC to join humanitarian efforts in the Kursk region. Ukraine is ready to facilitate their work and prove its adherence to international humanitarian law.

— Andrii Sybiha 🇺🇦 (@andrii_sybiha) September 16, 2024

Posting on the social media platform X, Sybiha said the Ukrainian army was ensuring “humanitarian assistance” and “safe passage” to civilians in the Kursk region, where Ukraine’s army remains more than a month after it began a major cross-border offensive.

Kyiv says it controls about 100 settlements in the southern Russian region on the border with Ukraine.

Sybiha said he told his ministry to issue the invitations after a visit to Ukraine’s Sumy region, from which Ukrainian forces launched their lightning raid in August.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that it had issued the requests, which asked the ICRC to monitor Ukraine’s compliance with international humanitarian law in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, which cover the protection of people caught up in armed conflicts.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded the invitation, which came as ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric arrived in Moscow for a planned visit, as “pure provocation”. He said Russia expects “a sober assessment” of Ukraine’s request from the UN and the ICRC.

Spoljaric is to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday, days after shelling killed three Ukrainian ICRC employees in a village in the front-line Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Spoljaric has condemned the attack.

Ukraine has been careful to try to present its army in a different light than the Russian forces occupying about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.

Moscow has denounced Ukraine’s counteroffensive, noting that it has pushed about 150,000 Russian civilians to evacuate.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies