Russia claims `neo-Nazis’ were at wake for Ukrainian soldier in village café where missile killed 52

UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s U.N. ambassador alleged Monday that “neo-Nazis” and military-age men were at the wake for a Ukrainian soldier in a village café where a missile last week killed 52 people, even as Security Council members retorted that Russia was responsible for starting the war and committing crimes. Vassily Nebenzia told a U.N. Security Council meeting called by Ukraine that the soldier was “a high-ranking Ukrainian nationalist,” with “a lot of neo-Nazi accomplices attending.” In Thursday’s strike by a Russian Iskander ballistic missile, the village of Hroza in the northeastern Kharkiv region, lost over 15% of its 300 population. Ambassador Ferit Hoxha, this month’s council president who presided at the meeting, said the missile strike and deaths in Hroza underscore again “the terrible price civilians are paying 20 months after the Russians invaded.” He said Russia may deny responsibility, but it started and is continuing a war and committing “horrible crimes,” and “it has also broken the universal ancestral law of absolute respect for those mourning.” U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood asked everyone in the council chamber to take a moment and let the appalling fact sink in: “People gathered to grieve their loved ones must now be grieved themselves.” “This is one of the deadliest strikes by Russia against Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion last year,” he said, stressing U.S. support for investigators from the U.N. and local authorities who have gone to Hroza to gather possible evidence of war crimes. China’s deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang, whose country is a close ally of Russia, said Beijing finds the heavy civilian casualties in the attack on the village “concerning.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied last Friday that Russia was responsible for the Hroza attack.