Britain blocks UN webcast of Russian meeting on Ukraine

Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal Security Council meeting on Ukraine on April 5 at which Russia's commissioner for children's rights - whom the International Criminal Court wants to arrest on war crimes charges - is due to speak.

The meeting will focus on "evacuating children from conflict zone" and Russia said on April 4 that Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually. Such meetings are not held in the Security Council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the United Nations, Reuters reports.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting children from Ukraine and the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.

"She should not be afforded a UN platform to spread disinformation," a spokesperson for Britain's UN mission in New York said in a statement. "If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague."

Moscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the war zone.

"Russia will from now on block UN webcasts of all similar meetings citing 'UK censorship clause'," Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy wrote on Twitter.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters last month that the informal meeting of Security Council members to be held on April 5 had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova.

Diplomats have said it is rare for a UN webcast to be blocked. However, last month China blocked the UN webcast of a US-convened informal Security Council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea.