Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, its mission to the United Nations in New York has invited a series of speakers to brief the Security Council in support of its position.
Irish businessman Chay Bowes is one of the latest to address the UN's most senior decision-making body.
Mr Bowes, described as a "scholar specialising in small arms and munitions", spoke by video link yesterday.
Speaking about the Ukraine conflict, he told the Security Council that NATO was supporting a military proxy conflict in a country which, he said, was described as "endemically corrupt" by the US State Department in 2019.
He described a "frenzied, incalculable, loosely regulated" flood of weapons into Ukraine, and said that NATO planners and their political funders in an "ever-hawkish Anglosphere" were driving the "seemingly perpetual escalation of military aid to Ukraine".
He said Ukrainians dying in their thousands on the battlefield were the victims of a military escalation in Ukraine’s "suicidal, full-frontal attacks".
A security council diplomat told RTÉ News that Mr Bowes was the latest in a line of briefers invited by Russia that brings the council into disrepute and shows the UN as a "bit of a circus".
Russia invited former Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters to speak to the council in February. Yesterday, Max Blumenthal, the editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, which has been denounced for sharing pro-Russian propaganda, also spoke at the UN.
Russia hit back at the criticism of its invitation for Mr Bowes, telling RTÉ News that he was not just a businessman, but also a famous journalist.
"He also has got some military background," a spokesperson for the Russian mission to the UN told RTÉ News.
Though he is no longer a shareholder in The Ditch, Mr Bowes was a founding member of the news website, which first reported concerns about Paul Hyde, the former deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanála. Mr Hyde was today sentenced to two months in jail.
Mr Bowes is now a correspondent for RT, the Russian state media outlet.
"Unlike many other journalists, he is not afraid to tell the truth about the situation in Ukraine," the spokesperson said.
The Ukrainian mission to the UN called Mr Bowes and Mr Blumenthal "two Russian stooges".
"Bowes is of no interest to me at all," the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told RTÉ News.
"I go to the United Nations Security Council for work and not for primitive propaganda shows," Ambassador Kyslytsya said.
Mr Bowes told RTÉ News today that the Ukrainian ambassador should "address the facts" raised in his speech.
"Not a single Ukrainian delegate addressed these facts," he said, adding that he was happy to debate the ambassador.
Mr Bowes first rose to prominence in 2020 when he supplied documents to Village magazine. An article in the magazine reported that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar had leaked a new GP contract.
Mr Bowes told The Business Post that he was motivated to expose "parish-pump, parochial political influence".
Earlier this year, Micheál Martin raised questions over the independence of The Ditch and the involvement of Mr Bowes, noting that he worked for RT.
Eoghan McNeill, the editor of The Ditch, disputed the remarks, saying the news website was an independent platform and has no links to Russia.
Yesterday’s security council meeting was another attempt by Russia to dump as much blame as possible on the West for supporting Ukraine, Richard Gowan, UN director of the Crisis Group, a think tank, said.
"There are real questions about the risks connected to sending arms to Ukraine, not least about the potential leakage of weapons into other conflict zones in future. These are worthy of a serious debate, but yesterday's meeting was never going to be that debate," he said.
"Look, everyone is entitled to make the most of an appearance before the Security Council, and I am sure it all felt very important," Mr Gowan added.
"But this was just a bit of UN theatre, and it wasn't really important at all."
