Security Council

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United Nations 
S
/2022/480 
Security Council 
Distr.: General 
13 June 2022 
Original: English 
22-09118 (E) 160622
*2209118* 
Letter dated 10 June 2022 from the Permanent Representative of 
the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the 
President of the Security Council 
I wish to recall my letter to the Secretary-General of 21 March 2022 
(
S/2022/253
), wherein we expressed serious concerns at the reports of the forced 
disappearance in Ukraine on 16 March 2022 of a prominent human rights defender 
and anti-fascist activist, Elena Berezhnaya, Director of the civil society organization 
Irina Berezhnaya Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection.
Ms. Berezhnaya is known to the Council for her participation in the Arria-
formula meeting on 22 December 2021 on the situation with national minorities and 
the glorification of Nazism in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, as well as for her 
letter that I quoted in my address to the eleventh emergency special session of the 
General Assembly on 28 February 2022 and that was later circulated as an annex to 
the above-mentioned letter. 
The present letter is to convey to the members of the Council and the Secretariat 
that, after Ms. Berezhnaya’s appearance before the Council, the Kiev regime initiated 
criminal proceedings accusing her of “high treason”. According to the available 
information, she has been kept in the Ukrainian capital’s Lukyanovskaya prison.
Being a senior over 70 years old, Ms. Berezhnaya suffers not only from 
persecution, but also from a number of age-related illnesses that are being seriously 
aggravated in the absence of due medical care. 
We therefore urge all those with influence over Kiev to exercise their leverage 
in order to move Ms. Berezhnaya to house arrest for the sake of humanity. 
Regretfully, Ms. Berezhnaya’s case is not an isolated episode but a symptomatic 
characteristic of the Kiev regime’s repressive nature. In my previous letter we had 
already expressed our most serious concern over the significant aggravation of the 
situation with regard to the personal safety of civil society activists and overall 
political freedom in the government-controlled areas in Ukraine. Yet another example 
of Kiev’s blatant repressive practices is the recent opening of criminal proceedings 
against a renowned Ukrainian political analyst, Mikhail Pogrebinsky, Director of the 
Kiev Centre of Political Studies and Conflictology. 
You will not be surprised to learn that Mr. Pogrebinsky “coinciden tally” was a 
guest expert at the Security Council Arria-formula meeting of 2 December 2020 on 
the implementation of the Minsk package of measures on the settlement in Ukraine 
and is now being accused of “high treason”. 
I would be grateful if the present letter could be circulated as a document of the 
Security Council. 
(
Signed
) Vassily 
Nebenzia