UN says 'unable' to verify Ukrainian remarks on Russia assassinations

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The United Nations, as it rejects all terrorist attacks and extrajudicial killings, is unable to verify the truthfulness of statements made by Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, claiming responsibility for recent assassinations of public figures in Russia, UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday.

"There's no way to verify the claims that are made, but what I can tell you is that we stand firmly against all acts of terror and extrajudicial executions, wherever they may take place," Dujarric told a press briefing.

In reaction to Budanov's statements, the Russian delegation to the UN earlier in the UN said it had distributed a letter to the UN Security Council. Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, referred to them as a "flagrant example of hate speech, Russophobia, and incitement to violence on the basis of nationality."

In an interview for Yahoo News conducted last month, General Budanov admitted that the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) has coordinated and will continue its campaign targeting and murdering Russians "anywhere on the face of this world."

In a YouTube interview published on Tuesday, Budanov admitted that his county was involved in recent assassinations of Russian public figures, bragging that Kiev had already "got to" many of them.

It is worth noting that Budanov was charged by a Moscow court with terrorism after he was linked to a series of attacks against Russia, including sabotage and terrorism. Most peculiarly, Budanov's GUR was found responsible for a foiled attempt to assassinate top Russian officials in Crimea.

At some point in the interview, Budanov announced what Russia called “terrorism, we call liberation,” only to go on to explain that the GUR has targeted Russian individuals anywhere across the globe.

This comes after top Russian figures, including Daria Dugia and Vladlen Tatarsky, were assassinated, and Ukraine was to blame.

In partnership with the BBC, Der Spiegel and other Western media, Ukrainian media outlet UNIAN sent a poll for readers to decide which Russian intellect should be killed next, only hours after Russian writer and activist Zakhar Prilepin was nearly assassinated in a targeted car bomb.

Potential targets included RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan (vulgarly referred to in the poll as "beaver eater"), and Russian TV news hosts Dmitry Kiselyov and Sergey Mardan among many others. The poll collected answers from 50,000 Telegram users.

Prilepin is considered the third high-profile Russian assassination target, not counting the two reported assassination attempts on Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

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The Russian Investigative Committee said the death of Tatarsky, a war reporter, was the result of the detonation of an unidentified explosive device. 32 other people were injured in the blast.

The Russian Investigative Committee detained Daria Trepova in St. Petersburg, Russia, on account of her involvement in Tatarsky's murder.

Meanwhile, the Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee revealed for the first time that the Ukrainian Special Services and the supporters of the extremist Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) planned the terrorist attack. 

Additionally, Russian investigations revealed Ukrainian involvement in the assassination of Darya Dugina in August last year.