India at UNSC abstains from voting on Russian resolution over Ukraine humanitarian situation

New York: India on Wednesday, March 23, 2022, abstained from voting at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the Russia-drafted resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

Of the 15 members of the UNSC, two countries voted in favour of the resolution while the rest 13 members countries, including the United States, abstained from the vote. While India and UAE joined the West in abstaining from the vote, China was the only country, barring Russia, to vote in favor of the resolution.

Amid the lack of nine votes in favor, the resolution failed to pass in the UNSC, CNN reported.
Speaking ahead of the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that Russia was once again trying to use the Security Council to “provide cover for its brutal actions.”

“It really is unconscionable that Russia would have the audacity to put forward a resolution asking the international community to solve a human crisis that Russia alone created,” the media outlet quoted her as saying.

“Russia does not care about the deteriorating humanitarian conditions or the millions of lives and dreams the war has shattered. If they cared, they would stop fighting,” she said, adding that Russia’s resolution “makes no mention of its role as the sole cause of this crisis. And our vote [of abstention] will show that we will play no part in that.”

However, the Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia, who also spoke ahead of the vote, claimed that their draft resolution was “analogous to other draft humanitarian resolutions.”

Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine’s breakaway regions, Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics followed by the announcement of a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.