The UK has blocked a United Nations webcast of an informal Security Council meeting on Ukraine today at which Russia's commissioner for children's rights, whom the International Criminal Court wants to arrest on war crimes charges, is due to speak.
The meeting will focus on "evacuating children from conflict zone" and Russia said that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually.
Such meetings are not held in the Security Council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the UN.
The Hague-based International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova.
It accuses them of illegally deporting children from Ukraine and the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February 2022.
"She should not be afforded a UN platform to spread disinformation," a spokesperson for the UK's UN mission in New York said in a statement.
"If she wants to give an account of her actions, she can do so in The Hague."
Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the war zone.
"Russia will from now on block UN webcasts of all similar meetings citing 'UK censorship clause'," Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy wrote on Twitter.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters last month that the informal meeting of Security Council members to be held today had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Mr Putin and Ms Lvova-Belova.
Diplomats have said it is rare for a UN webcast to be blocked.
However, last month China blocked the UN webcast of a US-convened informal Security Council meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea.
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