Ukraine requests 'urgent' Human Rights Council debate: UN

Kyiv on Thursday asked the UN Human Rights Council to hold an urgent debate on human rights in Ukraine "stemming from the Russian aggression", the United Nations said.

The President of the Human Rights Council received a letter from Ukraine's ambassador to the UN office in Geneva, requesting the debate "as urgently as possible" during a session several weeks long to start next week in the Swiss city, it said in a statement.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to attend that session on Tuesday.

The council's bureau would meet to discuss Ukraine's request on Friday, it said.

The human rights body's 47 member states will have to decide whether or not to hold the debate.

The matter is likely to go to a vote as Russia is a member, as are the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The European Union has already signalled its support for such a debate.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia's unprecedented military aggression against #Ukraine," the EU office in Geneva tweeted.

"We fully support the request by (Ukraine) for an urgent debate."