MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/. The Russian special military operation in Ukraine seeks to save people, demilitarize and denazify this state in order to prevent such things from happening again, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in his video address to the UN Human Rights Council meeting Tuesday.
"The goal of our actions is to save people by fulfilling our allied obligations, as well as to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine so that such things never happen again," the top diplomat said.
Lavrov noted that Russia "could not remain indifferent to the fate of four million people in Donbass" amid the "most blatant violations of rights of ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine and the eight year-long war against them with all signs of genocide, as well as the West’s stubborn refusal to bring the Ukrainian authorities to order."
"President Putin decided to recognize Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic, and, in response to the request from the leaders of DPR and LPR, to begin the special military operation on protection of its residents in accordance with the treaties of friendship and mutual aid, signed with these republics," he said. "This is particularly relevant amid the pulling of Ukraine into NATO, pumping the current regime, who openly made territorial claims to the Russian Federation, threatened the use of force and acquisition of the nuclear military potential, with strike weapons."
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics, he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories. Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.