Yesterday (October 12) the United Nations General Assembly 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.
143 countries out of the 193-member General Assembly voted in favor of the resolution that reaffirmed the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.
The countries who voted against were Belarus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Russia and Syria. China, India and a handful of other countries (mostly from Africa) abstained. The vote in majority was slightly more than the 141 who voted in March to denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and considerably more than the 100 who voted against the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The resolution “defending the principles” of the UN Charter, notes that the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia are temporarily occupied by Russia as a result of aggression, violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence.
The debate over the Ukrainian resolution began on Monday, with the General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi telling the world’s most representative deliberative body that the UN Charter, the Secretary-General, and the Assembly itself had been clear – Russia’s invasion, and attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory by force, “is illegal”. “When it becomes a daily routine to watch images of destroyed cities and scattered bodies, we lose our humanity…We must find a political solution based on the UN Charter and the international law,” he said.
