Britain and other Western regimes are trying to ‘whitewash’ abuse by Ukraine of captured Russian fighters. So says the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

 Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service says Western governments are “accomplices to the inhuman crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis” in torturing captured Russian soldiers and depriving them of adequate food and medical treatment.

It also claims to have “reliable data that after the publication of shocking videos with the torture of captured Russian servicemen in Ukraine, the nationalist Kiev regime is making efforts to prevent the disclosure of such facts in the future”.

The SVR, posting on its often-suppressed website, claims Ukraine’s leadership has told Britain’s Foreign Office that it will not comply with the Geneva Convention. “Captured Russian servicemen, many of whom are wounded, are not supposed to be provided with adequate food and emergency medical care, ‘under the pretext that ‘many Ukrainians are now deprived of this’.”

It also asserts that Ukraine is trying to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) gaining access to the prisoners.

The SVR asserts that Britain is aiming to “whitewash” the image of Ukraine by asking the ICRC only to visit a “place of ‘exemplary’ detention of prisoners’.

This would be so as to avoid the “negative consequences of publicising the torture of captured servicemen,” it claims.

The SVR statement concludes: “Such manipulations around Russian prisoners of war convincingly indicate that the authorities of many Western states, which consider themselves world champions of human rights, are not only aware of Kiev’s gross violations of international humanitarian law, but are also trying to help it avoid responsibility. This makes them accomplices to the inhuman crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and requires an appropriate legal assessment.”