Posted on 10/13/2022 7:53:07 AM PDT by Salohcin
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly condemned Russia's "attempted illegal annexation" of four partially occupied regions in Ukraine and called on all countries not to recognize the move, strengthening a diplomatic international isolation of Moscow since it invaded its neighbor.
Three-quarters of the 193-member General Assembly - 143 countries - voted in favor of a resolution that also reaffirmed the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.
"It's amazing," Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the vote as he stood next to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who said the result showed Russia could not intimidate the world.
Only four countries joined Russia in voting against the resolution - Syria, Nicaragua, North Korea and Belarus. [Emphasis added] Thirty-five countries abstained from the vote, including Russia's strategic partner China, while the rest did not vote.
"Today it is Russia invading Ukraine. But tomorrow it could be another nation whose territory is violated. It could be you. You could be next. What would you expect from this chamber?" Thomas-Greenfield told the General Assembly before the vote.
Moscow in September proclaimed its annexation of four partially occupied regions in Ukraine - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - after staging what it called referendums. Ukraine and allies have denounced the votes as illegal and coercive.
The General Assembly vote followed a veto by Russia last month of a similar resolution in the 15-member Security Council.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the General Assembly ahead of the vote that the resolution was "politicized and openly provocative," adding that it "could destroy any and all efforts in favor of a diplomatic solution to the crisis."
'DOUBLE STANDARDS'
The moves at the United Nations mirror what happened in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea. The General Assembly then adopted a resolution declaring the referendum invalid with 100 votes in favor, 11 against and 58 formal abstentions.
China abstained on Wednesday because it did not believe the resolution will be helpful, China's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang said.
"Any action taken by the General Assembly should be conducive to the de-escalation of the situation, to be conducive to the early resumption of dialogue and should be conducive to the promotion of a political solution to this crisis," he said.
The United States and other Western countries lobbied ahead of Wednesday's vote. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken convened a virtual meeting on Tuesday with diplomats from more than 100 countries.
They won dozens more votes than compared with the 2014 result, and improved on the 141 countries who voted to denounce Russia and demand it withdraw its troops from Ukraine within a week of its Feb. 24 invasion.
Moscow has then been trying to chip away at its international isolation. As Russia and the West have vied for diplomatic influence, some states - particularly in the global South - have grown concerned about paying the price for being squeezed in the middle of an intense geopolitical rivalry.
"We deplore the politics of the double standards of the powerful of this world when it comes to Africa," Democratic Republic of Congo U.N. Ambassador Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja told the General Assembly on Wednesday.
"We support Ukraine. We want to see the war ended," he said. "But we would like to see the international community take similar action against other situations in the world where countries are being invaded and occupied."
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Costas Pitas and Grant McCool)
And you evidence that the referendums were a sham is?
300 years of Russian history.
...annnnnnnd, wait for it....this changes nothing.
Angry letter forthcoming.
You should redirect your question to the United Nations.
The UN is like Ukraine - on gigantic money laudering operation.
Except for their neighbors with 2.5 billion people and growing economically.
It’s comical to see FReepers give a damn what the UN says.
And Biden, Democrats, Soros, Schwab, the WEF, the EU, etc.
How about we fix our own country?
Ukraine isn’t, and has never been, our ally.
Lol!!! The UN. This is the same body that foists the IPCC on us. What a joke. The UN? Really?
Thank you for not answering the question.
“ And you evidence that the referendums were a sham is? ”
To start with, the very fact they were in Ukraine conducting referenda. These are as legitimate as Mexico’s would be if they were to militarily invade Southern California and do their own on whether Southern California wanted to join Mexico.
Thank you for learning nothing from history. All of Putin’s tactics are straight out of the KGB playbook.
But I’ll help, anyway. So Russia has claimed ownership of a Ukrainian city of 700,000 people that it doesn’t even control. Not a single “vote” was cast there. How crazy is that? That’s normal in Stalinist style “election” in Russia.
So as punishment Russia has been raining ballistic missiles on women and children there over the past couple weeks. Blowing up one apartment building after another Al Qaeda style. Over 70 dead at last report.
Do you want more?
“Only four countries joined Russia in voting against the resolution - Syria, Nicaragua, North Korea and Belarus. “
ha ha
send a condemnation and resolution letter as always. Always a letter of rage. Gawd, the useless existence of this organization.
Yeah. The same clowns who published 10 letters of condemnation to Saddam. Always the effing’ letters..
1. Over half the permanent adult population of each Oblast was denied a vote - internally displaced persons, refugees, and people still in Ukraine held territory inside the Oblast. In Zaporizhzhia city alone that’s 710,000 people.
2. Complete lack of accredited election monitors - certainly not impartial observers in most cases. Monitors included propagandists on the Russian payroll, and people permanently barred from election monitoring anywhere.
3. Voting under military occupation is outlawed, and forcing people at gunpoint didn’t help.
4. Overtly irregular counting including in one district where a Russian TV news crew broadcasted as an election official was stuffing unmarked ballot sheets into the yes pile AND shouting “da!” with each one. The ballot papers were even held the wrong way round so she wasn’t even looking at the tickboxes.
5. The results were known before counting even started.
6. Under Ukrainian constitutional rules the Oblasts cannot unilaterally modify the borders of Ukraine.
7. Under the Budapest Memorandum and other agreements between Russia and Ukraine, Russia is obligated to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and borders; actively orchestrating sham referendums of secession is a blatant violation of multiple treaty obligations.
8. None of these referendums were mandated by a credible process. One was ordered by a Kremlin appointee who has never secured more than 5% in any election in the region he was handed control over... Before this war he couldn’t possibly have secured majority support for even holding the rederendum let alone win it.
9. The referendum questions were loaded. In Zaporizhzhia the question only allowed for full annexation by Russia, or not. All past plebiscites indicated higher support for greater autonomy within Ukraine than either independence or Russian annexation.
10. Judging by the jubilant reception in the villages around Kherson, an awful lot of people in the city who voted for annexation were Russian tourists and opportunistic collaborators who have today been advised (by one of their leaders) to evacuate.
11. Russia has been offering people Russian passports and citizenship for months with surprisingly low take-up in two of the regions; it’s not very credible to have to force people to vote for annexation at gunpoint after failing to win them over with a free opportunity to take Russian citizenship.
12. At no point in its history has Zaporizhzhia been pro Putin. It certainly won’t be after Putin shelled the hell out of it within a fortnight of officially welcoming it into Russia. Thousands have voluntary crossed the border from the Russian held south to Ukrainian held North in the last 3 months, further undermining the narrative of the referendum.
I’m sure there’s more.
Yes, there’s more. Anybody with a Russian passport could vote. One of the Russian TV propagandists cast a ballot. The whole thing is a Monty Python farce and only the willfully blind don’t see it for what it is.
If you so want to devote the United States’s resources to the cause of election integrity around the world, then let Congress vote to declare war. Let the American people have a say for once in sending weapons and military forces abroad!
Or let the UN send in peacekeepers, if the world truly wants to show they mean business. After all, Russia’s veto on the Security Council can be overridden by a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly. Let’s see if the UN’s condemnations actually mean something!
In short the vote was 143 in favor, 5 countries opposed including Russia, with 35 abstentions. The UN is rarely so decisive on such things.
Um, the resolution failed. Countries comprising half the world’s population either voted against the resolution or to abstain.
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