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The Russian ambassador to Ireland Yuri Filatov has accused the Ukrainian government of using “infamous images and fakes about Mariupol”.
The city has been besieged by the Russian military since the beginning of March.
Independent observers say that large parts of the city have been levelled by Russian shelling and a major humanitarian crisis is apparent for 160,000 people who are trapped there without food, water, shelter or electricity.
Writing a blog on the Telegram website, Mr Filatov accused Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” of using civilians as human shields in the city. He also accused the western media of ignoring shelling of civilians in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, which is only recognised by Russia.
The ambassador alleged that images of 20 people being killed by a missile in Donetsk were faked and used in western media as evidence of Russian aggression against Ukrainian civilians.
Special military operation
Mr Filatov acknowledged that the “special military operation” has been a “dramatic, traumatic period for many Ukrainians”, but he said the suffering of the Russian speaking people in the east of Ukraine has been going on since 2014.
“It does not fit into the narrative, propagated in Europe, it is being suppressed in the media,” he wrote. “There are a lot of hard facts that need to be addressed to make a fair judgement of what has been going on in Ukraine.”
Mr Filatov alleged that the government which took over in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution of 2014 was one composed of “Neo-Nazi and right-wing groups and parties”.
Ukrainian governments since then have cracked down on Russian language speakers and honoured Nazi collaborators during the Second World War, he stated.
He accused Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, of co-operating with neo-Nazis when he came to power in 2019.
Mr Filatov repeated the assertion made by Russian president Vladimir Putin that the Ukrainian government was planning an offensive operation for the breakaway Donbass region in March.
“In order to prevent the genocide and to deny the Kiev regime any ability to inflict any further suffering on the people of Donbass, the decision was made to start a special military operation in Ukraine,” Mr Filatov wrote.
The Ukrainian government, he went on to state, has been facilitated by the West which has closed its eyes “to its ultranationalist, radical nature, with the sole purpose of creating hostile and aggressive entity on the border of Russia”.
The ambassador urged Irish people to consider that the “people of Donbass also deserve better and a peaceful life now and in the future, while racism, neo-Nazism and hatred should be resolutely rejected”.
Russian embassy
Mr Filatov alleged earlier this month in a Russian television interview that protesters had been “rough and really aggressive” at the country’s embassy in Dublin.
In an interview with the state-owned Russia 24 television station, Mr Filatov said the situation in Ireland is “frankly difficult”, and he accused the country of being to the forefront of “anti-Russian events” in the European Union.
Blaming the Irish media for portraying an “absolutely tendentious picture” of the Ukraine invasion, the ambassador told Russian viewers that the Irish public is hostile to “Russia and everything Russian”.
Earlier this week the Government announced the expulsion of four Russian diplomats from its embassy in Dublin alleging that they were engaged in espionage.