Russia outrages the world’s democracies by allowing a war criminal to spread lies in U.N.

On Wednesday, representatives of 49 countries and the EU to the United Nations came up with a joint statement “in response to the Russian Federation’s Arria-formula meeting on the unlawful forced deportation of children by the Russian Federation in Ukraine.”

The statement came ahead of an informal meeting at the U.N. Security Council with Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine.

“Today, the Russian Federation will further abuse the powers and privileges of a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council to spread disinformation about its widespread abduction and unlawful forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children,” the statement reads.

“The facts are clear: Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported over 19,500 Ukrainian children from their homes within Ukraine to Russia,” the statement stressed. “This has included the deliberate separation of children from their parents and the abduction of children from orphanages before placing these children for adoption within Russia.”

Moreover, according to RFERL, Britain blocked a U.N. webcast of the meeting. “She [Lvova-Belova] should not be afforded a U.N. platform to spread disinformation,” a spokesperson for Britain’s U.N. mission said in a statement. “If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague.”