UN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of becoming a “terrorist” at the head of a “terrorist state” and called for Russia’s expulsion from the United Nations. In a virtual address to the United Nations Security Council, Zelenskyy called on the United Nations to set up an international tribunal to investigate “the actions of the occupying Russian troops on Ukrainian soil” and force the country to suffer. responsibility.
“We must act urgently to do everything to make Russia stop killing,” Zelenskyy said, warning that otherwise Russia’s “terrorist activity” would spread to other European and Asian countries. , targeting the Baltic states, Poland, Moldova and Kazakhstan. “Putin has become a terrorist,” he said.
“Terrorist acts every day, no weekends. Every day they work like terrorists. In calling for Russia to expel the 193 members of the United Nations, Zelenskyy cited Article 6 of the United Nations Charter which states that a member “who has repeatedly violated the principles contained in this Charter may be General Assembly expulsion from the organization, recommendation of the Security Council.
However, expulsion from Russia is practically impossible. This is because as a permanent member of the council, Russia can use its veto power to block any attempt to overthrow him. Ukraine convened the council meeting in the wake of recent Russian attacks, including Monday’s flaming air strike on a crowded shopping center in the center of the town of Kremenchuk that Mr. said to have killed at least 18 people and wounded 30 others.
“Dozens of people are missing” and body fragments have been found, including hands and feet. The Ukrainian leader began his speech by listing Russian attacks in recent days and giving the names and ages of many of the victims. He concluded his speech by asking the 15 members of the Security Council and others in the room to stand in silence in memory of the “tens of thousands” of Ukrainian children and adults killed in the war.
All members stood, including Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky. When he spoke later, Polyansky objected to giving Zelenskyy a second chance to speak before the Security Council, a move by the Albanian who is chairing the council this month. The Russian envoy said the video of the Ukrainian president’s speech violated the council’s existing tradition and practice, which stipulates that leaders who wish to speak before the council must be present in the room. “The United Nations Security Council should not be turned into a base for President Zelenskyy’s remote public relations campaign to get more weapons from NATO summit participants,” Polyansky said. Private in Madrid, Polyansky. He confirmed there was no Russian attack on the Kremenchuk shopping mall, adding that Russian precision weapons hit the hangars at the Kremenchuk Sugar Machinery Factory with weapons and ammunition from United States and Europe for Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbass. The mall was located some distance away, but the explosion “created a fire that then spread to the mall,” Polyansky said.
The Russian envoy told Western countries that by supplying Ukraine with weapons, they are buying time to buy Ukraine’s leaders “to sit down at the negotiating table with a pragmatic stance rather than with weapons.” mark”.
“We have launched a special military operation to prevent Ukraine from shelling the Donbass and to ensure that its territory, which has become anti-Russian at the request of some Western countries, as well as their nationalist leaders stopped posing, he said.
“And until those goals are achieved, our operations will continue.” Deputy US Ambassador Richard Mills, like many other Western ambassadors, blamed Russia for the destruction of the mall, saying the attack “was part of a pattern of cruelty, a place where the military has Russia kills civilians and destroys civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.”
He pointed out that there is a lot of publicly available evidence “that Russia and Russia alone” are responsible for this attack and others.
