Torture is not ‘a yes or no question’: Russian ambassador

Russia’s ambassador to Australia, Alexey Pavlovsky, has waved away questions about the country’s soldiers using torture in Ukraine, saying he does not think the issue is “a yes or no question”.

Grilled on ABC’s Radio National about the United Nations’ finding in October that the use of torture by Russian authorities was a crime against humanity, Pavlovsky said the UN was biased and the situation was complicated.

Alexey Pavlovsky equivocated on allegations of torture.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“I don’t accept this as a yes or no question,” Pavlovsky said when asked if torture was happening.

Told by host Steve Cannane that it was “a pretty simple question”, the ambassador said: “Maybe, but I don’t accept it because reality is much more complicated than the ABC wants to make it.”

In October, a UN commission of inquiry on Ukraine said it had found additional evidence that Russian forces had committed “indiscriminate attacks” and war crimes in Ukraine, including rape and the deportation of children to Russia.

“The commission has found new evidence that Russian authorities have committed violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law, and corresponding crimes, in areas that came under their control in Ukraine,” it said in a report submitted to the UN General Assembly, listing attacks in the cities of Uman and Kherson, among others.

Cannane challenged the ambassador, saying even if he did think Russians were torturing people in Ukraine, “you couldn’t actually say it, could you? Publicly, if you said that, under Russian law, you would be jailed for 15 years for criticising the army.”

Pavlovsky said that was not a correct interpretation of the law and claimed Russia was more liberal in allowing dissenting views than Australia. Western officials have established that Russia has poisoned opposition leaders and imprisoned the most prominent of them, Alexei Navalny, until he died in an Arctic Russian jail.

Asked if he had read the UN report on torture, Pavlovsky said he may have but that “all you are saying about the so-called Russian occupation is, again, propaganda. So whatever you said now can be debunked.”

While successive Australian governments have considered expelling Pavlovsky, both former foreign minister Marise Payne and Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take the step, keeping the lines of communication open even as Russia and Australia sanctioned hundreds of each other’s citizens.

In October 2022, Pavlovsky warned that any move to expel him would be followed by the expulsion of Australia’s ambassador to Russia, John Geering.

Ultimately, Pavlovsky said, “It’s absolutely up to the Australian side to decide whether or not it needs to maintain communications through embassies with this or that state”.

Asked on Radio National about the criticisms of Putin’s nuclear weapon threats, Pavlovsky finished the interview insisting that Russia’s “nuclear doctrine is strictly defensive and certainly not more threatening than the US one”.

“The world needs responsible and reasonable politicians,” Pavlovsky said without a hint of apparent irony. “Unfortunately, Australian politicians do not qualify.”

With Reuters

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