The US and Albania introduce a resolution before the Security Council to condemn the referendums
No one had any doubts that the result of the impromptu referendums organized by Russia to annex the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia will be overwhelmingly favorable to their integration into the Russian Federation, because Moscow planned it that way. Indeed, the ‘yes’ vote achieved an overwhelming 97% support.
This Tuesday, the Undersecretary for Political Affairs and Peacebuilding, Rosemary Di Carlo, confirmed to the Security Council that the “de facto authorities”, accompanied by soldiers, went door to door with the ballot boxes forcing the population to vote. With this, he confirmed the accusations of the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, who on Friday denounced that due to the low participation, the Russian soldiers, armed with machine guns, visited a large part of the residents “so that they could vote correctly” and even provided them with electoral ballots. with a mark indicating what they had to vote for.
Di Carlo did not go into those details, but reiterated that unilateral actions to provide “a layer of legitimacy to attempts to acquire territory from another state by force, while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be considered legal under the international law.” The 75-year-old diplomat reiterated that Russia is an “occupying force” and denounced that her forces daily attack civilian targets and water and energy infrastructure, including with drones in Odessa.
With the same determination, other members of the Council, such as France, assured that “never” the result of these farce referendums will be recognized, because “can you imagine what it would mean for international legality if it were done?” asked its ambassador. “How could we guarantee the safety of other countries?”
The attempts of the Russian ambassador, Vasily Alekseevich Nebenzya, to compare them with the referendum in Kosovo and to justify its holding as a way to protect the pro-Russian population of those regions were directly rejected by the Albanian ambassador, Ferit Hoxha, who described it as “another Russian lie aimed at distorting reality.”
In fact, the United States and Albania have proposed to record the condemnation in the annals of history with a resolution that could be voted on in this very body next week, depending on the time they take to achieve broad support from the rest of the members. The foreseeable thing is that Russia will use its right to veto to prevent it, but the American ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that if she does so “to protect herself” she will transfer the resolution to the plenary session of the General Assembly, a broader body whose decisions do not are binding. The situation that allows Russia to be a judge and part of this process has called into question the UN, where voices grow to reform the distribution of power in the Security Council and limit the right to veto held by only five countries -Russia, USA, China, France and the UK.
The Ukrainian conflict has claimed at least 13,844 civilian casualties to date, according to data verified by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that Di Carlo shared, although he insisted that the real figures are probably “considerably higher”.
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