By an overwhelming majority, the UN General Assembly calls for Russian withdrawal from Ukraine

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution this Thursday with an overwhelming majority requesting “immediate withdrawal” of Russian troops in Ukraine to end the war launched a year ago by Moscow.

With 141 votes in favor, 7 against (Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Mali and Syria) and 32 abstentions, the international community approved the resolution “Principles of the United Nations Charter on which a global, just and lasting peace in Ukraine is based”.

In its resolution sponsored by dozens of countries and in the face of notable abstention from Chinathe UN forum reaffirmed its “commitment” to Ukraine’s “territorial integrity”.

He called on Russia to “withdraw immediatelycompletely and unconditionally all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders,” referring to the territories annexed by Moscow. Since Wednesday, representatives of dozens of countries have paraded on the podium at the United Nations to support Ukraine, the whose Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba yesterday urged the world to choose “between good and evil”.

Not binding

Even the text, which is not binding calls for a “cessation of hostilities” and “stresses the need to achieve as soon as possible a general, just and lasting peace in Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter”.

Due to Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council preventing any decision on Ukraine contrary to Moscow, the body’s General Assembly took the baton in this dossier a year ago.

This was the fourth resolution voted by the General Assembly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year. The previous ones obtained between 140 and 143 votes in favor and five against (Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria) while in the third, in October, Eritrea left the group and Nicaragua joined.

A slightly different quarter, in April, which suspended Russia from the Human Rights Council, won 93 to 24, with 58 abstentions.

Among the Latin American countries, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador abstainedwhile Venezuela was unable to vote due to non-payment of its fee to the organization.

“In a year, we shouldn’t meet again for the second anniversary of this absurd war of aggression”, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi warned on Thursday, who rather hopes for a “peace summit” in 2024.

But if the war continues it is due to “lack of desire for Russia” to withdraw its troops from Ukraine, recalled the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, who warned that the Russian invasion has generated a “globalized” and “toxic” war with consequences for the whole world, as we have seen with rising energy prices and food prices.

If Russia “stops fighting, this war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends,” said German Chancellor Annalena Baerbock.

To those in favor of negotiations with Russia, he recalled: “We already have a peace plan: it is called the Charter of the United Nations, whose principles apply to all states: sovereign equality, territorial integrity and non-use of force”, asking to Russia to respect it.

The representative of China, a country that supports a “political solution” between kyiv and Moscow, he warned from the rostrum of the Assembly that “conflicts and wars have no winners”.

negotiated exit

“No matter how difficult the door to a political solution, (it) cannot be closed,” said Deputy United Nations Ambassador Dai Bing.

A call that several countries of America have joined, such as Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia or Uruguay.

Before the vote on the resolution, the forum rejected by a large majority several amendments presented by Belarus, an ally of Moscow, which called for “the immediate start of peace negotiations” and called on member states to “refrain from sending arms to the area of conflict”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that it will “methodically” continue its offensive in Ukrainein an anti-Western discourse reminiscent of Cold War rhetoric.

For the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassili Nebenzia, the West is trying to “inflict a defeat on Russia”, even at the price of “dragging the whole world into the abyss of war”.

On Friday, the UN Security Council will celebrate the anniversary of the invasion with a ministerial meeting in the presence, among others, of the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken.