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The United Nations Security Council held a minute’s silence on Friday after Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of genocide against his country.
However, the silence was broken by Russia’s UN envoy, who insisted it was kept for “all those who have perished” in the conflict, including those who have perished since 2014.
“All lives are priceless,” said Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya, who at the same session in New York City accused the West of using the security council to further its own agenda.
Kuleba proposed a minute’s silence to honor the “victims of aggression” during Friday’s session to mark the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
But when he and other members of the assembly stood up, the Russian ambassador began to play his microphone. Before the dismayed look of the envoys, he insisted: “We stand up to honor the memory of all the victims of what happened in Ukraine, starting in 2014.”
The minute of silence proposed by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister was interrupted by Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya (pictured), who insisted that it should be kept for “all those who perished” in the conflict, including those that have been produced since 2014.
Moscow, without evidence, accused Kiev of committing genocide against Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which has seen clashes between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists since 2014.
Nebenzya’s comments appeared to be a nod to this claim, as well as Russia’s insistence that Ukraine and the West are to blame for the fighting in the region and Putin’s invasion on February 24, 2022.
The members of the assembly were forced to sit back down to listen to Nebenzya. All those who perished. All lives are priceless,’ she told the session.
According to the UN, more than 8,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the country since the invasion began a year ago today, as well as 13,000 injured.
Furthermore, both sides are believed to have lost tens of thousands of casualties in brutal fighting. A recent British estimate suggested that Russia alone has so far seen more than 200,000 soldiers killed or wounded.
The scuffle came after the UN voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to demand that Russia immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
Ukraine won strong support in a non-binding vote in which 141 of the 193 UN members supported, seven opposed and 32, including China and India, abstained.
On the eve of the first anniversary of the brutal war, support for kyiv was little changed from last October, when 143 countries voted to condemn Russia’s declared annexation of four regions of Ukraine.
“Today, the United Nations General Assembly has just spoken very clearly,” said the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.
“This vote shows that the international community supports Ukraine.”
The vote came after two days of debate during which Kuleba urged the international community to choose “between good and evil.”
He rejected the idea that kyiv only enjoyed the support of the West: the European Union, the United States and their key allies.
“The vote challenges the argument that the Global South is not on Ukraine’s side, because many countries representing Latin America, Africa and Asia voted in favor today,” Kuleba said. “The support is much broader and will only continue to consolidate and solidify,” she added.
Pictured: Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other representatives observe a moment of silence during a United Nations Security Council meeting to mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. However, the gesture was interrupted by the Russian representative.
Pictured: An aerial view of the eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut (February 14), which has been almost completely destroyed as Kiev soldiers fight to defend it against invaders from Russia.
Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, expressed his gratitude to all those “who stood up for Ukraine on the anniversary of the unprovoked Russian aggression.”
“The world understands which side the truth is on,” he said.
However, Nebenzya insisted on Friday that the motion was brought forward only to serve the Western agenda.
“What we are seeing today is another attempt to grant certain rights to a group of the country while you, as the representative of the gold billion, give preference to Ukraine just because it is part of your geopolitical project,” he said.
‘It turns out that it seems that the problems of the rest of the world do not concern you. It seems that the unprecedented number of delegations invited today … 12 EU countries … it is clear that all these countries that have the same EU position dictated by Brussels will not bring added value to the discussion,’ he added.
A day earlier, he had dismissed the resolution, calling Ukraine a “neo-Nazi” and accusing the West of sacrificing the country and the developing world in its desire to defeat Russia. “They are ready to plunge the entire world into the abyss of war” to maintain their own “hegemony,” Nebenzya said.
The resolution reaffirmed support for the ‘sovereignty’ and ‘territorial integrity’ of Ukraine, rejecting any Russian claims to parts of the country.
It also demanded “that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders” and called for “the cessation of hostilities.”
The vote showed Moscow’s continued isolation on the world stage after 12 months of war. He only got the support of six other nations: Belarus, Syria, North Korea, Mali, Nicaragua and Eritrea.
Despite its limited backing, Russia has used its veto power to block any binding motion against it in the UN Security Council.
Instead, the UN General Assembly has taken up the issue, showing solid support for kyiv in successive votes. “Next year, we should not gather here to commemorate the second anniversary of this senseless war of aggression,” Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said during the debate.
“Russia can and must stop tomorrow,” French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said. ‘This war that Russia is waging is everyone’s business because it threatens the existence of a State, because it represents a dominator and imperialist plan and because it denies the existence of borders.’
The vote showed that India and China had not been persuaded to openly condemn Moscow’s invasion, even as both criticized Moscow’s threats to deploy nuclear weapons in the conflict.
Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, speaks during the 11th Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly on Ukraine, at the UN headquarters in New York City on February 22.
Before the vote, Dai Bing, China’s deputy representative to the United Nations, took a neutral stance, calling on both sides to stop fighting and enter into peace talks.
“We support Russia and Ukraine getting closer and resuming direct dialogue as soon as possible,” he said.
But he also voiced one of Russia’s justifications for the invasion, that its own security was threatened by Ukraine’s inclination toward Western Europe and NATO.
Any arrangement, he said, must give “due attention to… the reasonable security concerns of all countries, thereby adequately addressing their legitimate security aspirations.”