The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses its regret on vetoing by the delegation of the Russian Federation in the United Nations Security Council a draft resolution on the situation in Ukraine. Being the only State voting against the decision aimed at de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine, the Russian Federation has isolated itself not only in the Security Council but in the whole world.
The unprecedented number of co-sponsors of the draft resolution of the Security Council (42 States representing different regions, among which are the United States and all European Union Member States), and only one vote “against” have become a victory of common sense over the language of force and confirmed the wide support of Ukraine facing military aggression of Russia.
It is outrageous that, being one of the permanent members of the Security Council to whom Member States entrusted primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, Russia has factually disregarded the fundamental principles and goals of the Charter of the United Nations. The draft is based on the inadmissibility of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any State, as well as on the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes (Article 2 of the UN Charter) and non-recognition of an acquisition of territory as a result of threat or use of force, and others.
In other words, “Russia has vetoed the UN Charter itself”, as it was rightly pointed out by the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations.
None of the responsible members of the United Nations, let alone the permanent member of the Security Council, has ever questioned such fundamental documents for today’s international and European security architecture as the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe of 1975 and the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The United Nations Security Council’s commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine in its internationally recognized borders, was reconfirmed by the United Nations Security Council, including Russia itself, in the presidential statement dated 20 June 1993 (S/26118).
The illegitimacy of the so-called referendum in Crimea scheduled for 16 March 2014, as well as the fact that its results cannot lay grounds to any changes in the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, have also been recognized internationally, as this step contradicts not only the Constitution of Ukraine but the international law as a whole.
All the above confirms that today’s Russian leadership has taken up principal responsibility for undermining the fundamental principles of international law and transformed Russia into a personification of threats to international peace and security in the 21st century.
