Ukraine crisis: UN votes to hold first emergency session of General Assembly in decades

UNGA’s Monday session will only be the 11th such session convened since 1950

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) called for an emergency meeting on Sunday after Russia vetoed its earlier resolution deploring Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will meet on Monday, despite another Russian veto, as protests in Russia and across the world gain momentum.

Sunday’s 15-member UNSC vote was procedural, so the veto was not applicable. The resolution to call the emergency meet was approved by 11 other members of the council, while India, China and UAE abstained from the vote.

This marks the second time the countries abstained from a UNSC vote in days. The countries had earlier abstained from the Friday resolution demanding Russia immediately stop aggression towards Ukraine.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi earlier on Saturday had a phone conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who sought India’s support at the UNSC. Mr Modi repeated his call for an immediate end to the violence.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine are holding talks in Belarus on Monday, marking five days of the invasion announced by Vladimir Putin on 24 February.

Mr Zelensky remarked on Sunday that the next 24 hours were a “crucial period” for Ukraine as he held a phone call with UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson.

Britain’s UN envoy Barbara Woodward said: “The members of this council have laid bare Russia’s diplomatic impotence. Russia again was isolated. Russia cannot stop the world from coming together to condemn its invasion of Ukraine.”

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said of UNSC votes: “Any attempt to circumvent the position of a Russian Federation, any attempt to disregard it, undermines the very bedrock of the UN Charter.”

The UN General Assembly session on Monday will only be the 11th such session convened since 1950.

The UN said on its website that “only 10 such emergency special sessions of the General Assembly have been convened since 1950, following the adoption of resolution 377A(V), widely known as ‘Uniting for Peace.’”

The UN statement also pointed out: “That text gives the Assembly the power to take up matters of international peace and security when the Security Council is unable to act because of the lack of unanimity among its five veto-wielding permanent members.”

UN chief António Guterres had also spoken on the phone with Mr Zelensky and emphasised “the determination of the United Nations to enhance humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN — one of the countries that had requested the meeting — said that “by calling for an emergency special session of the General Assembly... [we] have recognised that this is no ordinary moment and that we need to take extraordinary steps to confront this threat to our international system”.

She added: “Russia cannot veto our voices. Russia cannot veto the Ukrainian people. And Russia cannot veto the UN Charter. Russia cannot, and will not, veto accountability.”

Ukraine ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya, meanwhile, expressed gratitude to those supporting the request for an emergency special session of the Assembly. He said: “The Genocide Convention is one of the most important international treaties, drafted in response to the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.”

He continued: “Russia, however, has twisted the concept of genocide, and perverted the solemn treaty obligation to prevent and punish genocide.”

The ambassador added: “Ukraine’s case before the ICJ [International Court of Justice] will establish that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is based on a lie and a gross violation of international law and must be stopped.”

On Sunday, Mr Putin also placed his country’s nuclear deterrent forces on “high alert” as tensions escalated with the west.