User:Rwendland/Russo-Ukrainian crisis-UNSC

United Nations Security Council

The U.S. called for an emergency debate at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) about the Ukraine situation, with ten votes for, two against and three abstentions.

In the debate on 31 January 2022, Ukrainian permanent representative at the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said Russia had built up 112,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders and in Crimea, with 18,000 deployed at sea off Ukraine’s coast. He said that "Ukraine is not going to launch a military offensive, neither in Donbass, nor in Crimea, nor anywhere else".

Russia’s permanent representative, Vasily Nebenzya, said the U.S. was stoking the conflict and the UNSC meeting was an attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine. He said Ukraine was not abiding the Minsk Protocols of 2014 and 2015 to end the conflict with the separatists, and western nations were "pumping Ukraine full of weapons" contrary to the Minsk Protocols. He said if western nations encourage Ukraine to sabotage the Minsk Protocols, then that could end in the worst way for Ukraine "and not because somebody has destroyed it, but because it would have destroyed itself and Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this."

U.S. permanent representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Russia had made the largest military mobilization for decades in Europe, and was trying "to paint Ukraine and western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack", but in fact the provocation was from Russia.

China's permanent representative, Zhang Jun, said the meeting was counterproductive and "quiet diplomacy, not megaphone diplomacy" was needed. He said "Russia has repeatedly stated that it has no plans to launch any military action. And Ukraine has made it clear that it does not need a war. Under such circumstances, what is the basis for the country’s concern to insist that there may be a war?"

No resolution was agreed at the meeting.