Dmitry Muratov. Screenshot: Novaya Gazeta
Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov has called on both Russia and Ukraine to stop shelling civilians and civilian infrastructure ahead of a third round of peace talks due to start in Geneva on Tuesday.
In a video address released on Monday, Muratov called on both sides to observe the Geneva Conventions, which the USSR — the forerunner to both countries — signed in 1954, and reminding them that the convention prohibited collective punishment and methods designed to inflict intimidation and terror on civilian populations.
Muratov said that the leaders of both countries should learn the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by heart, adding that the “indiscriminate shelling of peaceful cities must be ruled out”.
“As you build your new world order, you are destroying the civilisation which at the very least meant that people in big cities had running water, heating and electricity. Give those things back,” Muratov said.
Since the beginning of the year there have been two sets of trilateral negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US, the second of which, while delivering no meaningful breakthrough on ending the war, resulted in the first prisoner swap between the warring sides for several months.
Muratov’s call came as two regions of Russia bordering Ukraine reported attacks on energy infrastructure on Monday, including missile strikes on a thermal power plant and an electricity substation in the Belgorod region.
Meanwhile, cities across Ukraine have been struggling to cope with the relentless onslaught of Russian missile and drone strikes during an unseasonably harsh winter which have left hundreds of thousands of people in Kyiv and Odesa without heating, power and running water.
