Great Britain blocked Lvova-Belova's speech at the UN Security Council, sending her to The Hague

British diplomats have blocked the video broadcast of the UN Security Council meeting, at which, at the invitation of Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children's rights under the Russian president, who became the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague together with Vladimir Putin, is to speak, writes bbc.com.

Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, and Sergey Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

An informal meeting on the topic "Evacuation of children from the conflict zone" is scheduled for Wednesday, it is organized by Russia, which this month chairs the UN Security Council.

However, Great Britain insisted that there was no video broadcast of this meeting, the British delegation reported on its Twitter account. The British ambassador also refused to attend this meeting in person. "If Mrs. Lviv-Belova wants to talk about her actions, she can do it in The Hague," the British mission said.

"The UN platform should not be provided to spread disinformation," British diplomats stressed.

As the New York Times points out, blocking the broadcast means that no video footage will be stored on the UN website after the fact. Broadcasting requires the consent of all 15 members of the Security Council, permanent or temporary, and objections are rare. However, according to the newspaper, last month China similarly blocked the broadcast of a meeting devoted to human rights violations in North Korea, indicating that the Security Council should not deal with human rights issues.

The purpose of the meeting was to "provide objective information about the situation of children in the conflict zone in Donbass and about the measures taken by the Russian authorities to evacuate children in danger," AFP quotes the Russian mission. According to Russian diplomats, Western countries are distorting the picture, calling what is happening abductions and forced displacements.

The Permanent Representative of Russia, Vasyl Nebenzya, previously said that the meeting was organized long before the announcement of the issuance of a warrant by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the arrest of Putin and Lvova-Belova.

His deputy Dmitry Polyansky wrote on Twitter that Russia is organizing an alternative broadcast of Lvova-Belova's speech.

He also threatened that Russia would consider this case as a precedent to block broadcasts of discussions initiated by Western countries. In recent months, Western countries have repeatedly organized meetings devoted, for example, to the atrocities of Russian troops in Ukraine.

Each country represented in the Security Council presides over it for a month. The chairmanship is transferred from country to country in alphabetical order, and on April 1 it passed to Russia for the first time since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The presiding country does not have additional powers, but it forms the meeting agenda and acquires additional opportunities to convey its position to the public, which especially worried Ukraine and its Western allies.

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