According to the Ukrainian diplomat Kyslytsia, 14 civilians died in the Russian attack on Monday and 97 others were injured. “Deliberately targeting civilians by launching rockets is a war crime,” he said.
Unfortunately, “one can hardly call for a stable and reasonable peace as long as an unstable and insane dictatorship exists in the neighborhood,” he added.
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebensia did not comment on the recent rocket attacks in Ukraine and defended the annexations by Russia. “We are blamed even though we are trying to protect our brothers and sisters in eastern Ukraine,” he said.
At the session of the UN General Assembly, a draft resolution will be debated condemning the annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Cherson and Zaporizhia and the “referendums” for an annexation to Russia that were held there. A vote on the resolution could take place on Wednesday.
In response to the planned resolution, Russia wrote to all member states, attacking “Western delegations” whose actions “have nothing to do with protecting international law and the principles of the UN Charter.”
Nebensia attempted to force a secret ballot on the resolution – an unusual procedure normally reserved for matters such as the election of the rotating members of the Security Council. However, the majority of members spoke out against a secret ballot.
Silvio Gonzato, EU Ambassador to the United Nations, reiterated that the EU does not and never will recognize “the illegal so-called referenda that Russia staged as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence”.
In the run-up to the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described Russia’s attacks as an “unacceptable escalation of the war”.
At the end of September, Russia vetoed a resolution condemning the annexations in the UN Security Council. In the UN General Assembly, in which all 193 UN member states are represented, Russia has no right of veto. The annexation of the four Ukrainian regions has been sharply criticized and not recognized by the West.
In the large-scale Russian attack series on Ukrainian cities, the capital Kyiv was also bombed on Monday for the first time since June. Moscow cited the weekend’s explosion of a truck bomb on the strategically important Crimean bridge as the reason, which the Russian government believes had been planted by the Ukrainian secret service. In the event of further “terrorist attacks,” Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened an even harsher response.