U.N. chief points to 'massive' rights violations in Ukraine

The head of the United Nations says Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered “the most massive violations of human rights” in the world today

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered “the most massive violations of human rights” in the world today, the head of the United Nations said Monday, as the war pushed into its second year with no end in sight.

The Russian invasion “has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech to the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva.

After failing to capture the Ukrainian capital in the opening weeks of the invasion and suffering a series of humiliating setbacks in the east and the south during the fall, Russia has stabilized the front and is concentrating its efforts on a slow push to capture the rest of the Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. Ukraine, meanwhile, hopes to use battle tanks and other new weapons pledged by the West to launch new counteroffensives and reclaim more of the occupied territory.

He said “attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties and terrible suffering.”

His remarks came as the Ukrainian military said that Russia launched attacks with exploding drones on several regions of the country that lasted from late Sunday until Monday morning, killing two.

Mr. Guterres cited cases of sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and violations of the rights of prisoners of war documented by the U.N. human rights office.

Guterres decried how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now 75 years old, has been “too often misused and abused.”