Photo: David Dee Delgado / Getty Images
By: Real America News Updated 25 Feb 2022, 23: 34 pm EST
Russia on Friday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution denouncing its invasion of Ukraine, while China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstained in the vote.
The 11 remaining members of the council voted in favor, which allowed the UN General Assembly of 193 members to examine the draft resolution.
The document, which from the first moment was doomed to failure since Moscow could block it, had been promoted by the United States to condemn the Russian military intervention and demand the withdrawal of his Ukrainian troops.
“Russia can veto this resolution, but it cannot veto our voices, it cannot veto the truth, it cannot veto the Ukrainian people”, said after the vote the American ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Beyond the language of the text, what Washington sought was to diplomatically isolate the government of Vladimir Putin, forcing the fifteen countries of the Security Council to pronounce on the conflict.
In the end, he got it halfway. Russia was left alone in the “no” and eleven countries supported the text, but another three abstained: China, India and the United Arab Emirates.
Once the expected Russian veto has been confirmed, The United States said it plans to take the resolution to the UN General Assembly, where Moscow cannot block it, but where the document will not be binding and will have less weight.
Even so, it would be an important message from the international community and it is hoped that the resolution will go ahead without many problems.
Today, more than eighty countries -including Spain- have already co-sponsored the text in the Security Council and, throughout the day, several acts of support for Ukraine were seen, including a photograph of the European ambassadors with a country flag in front of the “Guernica” tapestry that hangs in the UN as a symbol of the horrors of war.
The camera mara of the United Nations Security Council erupted in rare applause on Friday night when Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, asked for a moment of silence to honor those who had died in Ukraine.
“I will ask all of you to take a moment of complete silence to pray, or to mediate if you do not believe in God, for peace,” Kyslytsya said. “Pray for the souls of those who have already died, for the souls of those who may die.”
He also invited the Russian ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, to “pray for salvation”, and Nebenzia then interceded to ask that the victims in the separatist regions of Donbas be taken into account as well.
It may interest you:
– NATO mobilizes its Response Force for the first time in its history after the attack on Ukraine
– The President of Ukraine accuses Russia of attacking “kindergartens and civil infrastructure” in a video
– Russia and Ukraine: the that Russian military action reveals about Putin’s plans