“For more than two years, Ukraine has suffered from the aggression of its neighbor, the Russian Federation. Russia has temporarily occupied and attempted to illegally annex a part of the territory of Ukraine – the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol – and continues hostile and subversive actions, supporting terrorism in the Donbas region. Russia employs a broad range of hybrid warfare techniques, including financing terrorism, to promote ideology of the so-called ‘Russian world’…

“This neo-imperialist ideology tolerates and encourages violation of the international law, human rights, perpetration of serious crimes, including terrorists acts. Fierce, deceitful propaganda disseminated by the state-controlled Russian media and through numerous means is one of the key elements of the ongoing hybrid aggression against Ukraine. …

“There are reported cases of teenagers’ participation in the activities of the Russian-backed terrorist organizations so-called ‘DNR’ and ‘LNR,’ which attacked several times civilians in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, using armaments and munitions supplied by the Russian Federation. …There is also credible information that the Russian proxies and their Kremlin masters are forcing pupils and students into their ranks using different means of influence, including religious organizations. Moreover, there are numerous testimonies that such means as promising to annul criminal records or to repay loans are practiced in the Russian campaign to recruit mercenaries into the terrorist gangs operating in the Donbas. Young people are common victims of such recruitment campaign.

“Therefore, apart from comprehensive efforts to eliminate the social, economic, cultural, religious and other grounds for the spread of violent extremism and terrorism, there is a need to address such phenomena as state propaganda of intolerance and hatred, as well as information wars, which often serve as part of hybrid warfare.”

– Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko, speaking at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on May 11 during the debate on “Threats to International Peace and Security Caused by Terrorist Acts.”