The UN Common Meeting voted to demand Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine by a big majority on Wednesday following its invasion of the nation that started six days in the past.
With 141 UN member states, out of a complete of 193, backing the decision, Moscow is discovering itself more and more remoted on the world stage.
Forward of the vote, these behind the decision had been hoping for a minimum of 100 votes in favor, making the ultimate determine fairly sudden.
German International Minister Annalena Baerbock thanked these member states who voted for the decision for this “historic outcome.” She wrote on Twitter that the vote made clear “when our peaceable order is underneath assault, we stand collectively.”
Key member states corresponding to China and India, who’ve but to explicitly condemn the invasion themselves, abstained, together with 33 others. Solely 5 nations voted towards: Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea.
Russia rejects decision
The Common Meeting decision “demanded that the Russian Federation instantly stop its use of pressure towards Ukraine and to chorus from any additional illegal risk or use of pressure towards any UN member state.”
The textual content handed by the meeting additionally expressed “grave concern at reviews of assaults on civilian services corresponding to residences, colleges and hospitals, and of civilian casualties, together with ladies, older individuals, individuals with disabilities, and kids.”
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, responded to the vote saying: “This doc is not going to permit us to cease navy actions.”
As a substitute, he argued, it will encourage “radical forces” and “nationalists” in Kyiv.
Moscow has repeatedly referred to the democratically elected authorities of Ukraine as extremists, saying a part of its marketing campaign is to “de-nazify” the nation, that’s, to take away the federal government, together with its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russia’s purpose is ‘genocide’
The decision was first offered to the meeting in an emergency assembly on Monday — solely the eleventh time such a gathering has been known as within the UN’s 77-year historical past. The worldwide attraction is just not legally binding, however the session was known as after the same decision was halted by a Russian veto on the extra highly effective UN Safety Council late final week.
“They’ve come to deprive Ukraine of the very proper to exist,” Ukraine’s ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya informed the Meeting forward of the vote. “It is already clear that the purpose of Russia is just not an occupation solely. It’s genocide.”
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of accelerating “brutality.”
“We have seen movies of Russian forces shifting exceptionally deadly weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield that features cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, that are banned underneath the Geneva Conference,” she mentioned.
Initially the textual content of the decision mentioned that the meeting “condemns” the invasion, however this was modified a number of occasions to broaden its attraction. Ultimately the meeting mentioned it “deplores within the strongest phrases the Russian Federation’s aggression towards Ukraine.”
However the decision did make clear that the UN was “condemning” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to place his nation’s nuclear forces on alert.
ab/msh (dpa, AFP)