Daily Times

The UN General Assembly voted Thursday to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.

Of the 193 members of the assembly, 93 voted in favor of suspension as proposed by the United States while 24 voted against and 58 abstained, suggesting weakening international unity against Russia at the United Nations. It was the second ever suspension of a country from the council. Libya was the first, in 2011.

Suspension required two-thirds of the votes for and against; the abstentions did not count. The countries voting against included China, Iran, the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan and communist Cuba, as well as Russia itself, Belarus and Syria.

Despite pressure from Moscow for a no vote, several African countries only abstained, such as South Africa and Senegal. Also abstaining were Brazil, Mexico and India.

The US argues that this punishment — suspending Russia from the Geneva-based organization that is the UN’s main human rights monitor — is more than symbolic and in fact intensifies Russia’s isolation after the assault on Ukraine that began February 24.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also called for Russia to be expelled from the UN Security Council “so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”

But Washington has admitted there is little anyone can do about Russia’s position on the Security Council, where it has a veto. More than 11 million people have been displaced since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

The world has been outraged by images of scores of civilians apparently executed and left in mass graves in areas formerly controlled by Russian troops. This carnage has led to new rounds of sanctions against Russia.

Journalists including from AFP last weekend found corpses in civilian clothes, some with their hands bound in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv.

“The images out of Bucha and devastation across Ukraine require us to now match our words with action,” US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Monday as she pressed for Russia’s suspension from the rights council.

“We cannot let a member state that is subverting every principle we hold dear to continue to participate” in the council, she said.

The Kremlin has denied Russian forces killed civilians, and alleged that the images of dead bodies in Bucha were “fakes.”

The UN Human Rights Council was founded in 2006 and is composed of 47 member states chosen by the General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Ukraine warned residents in the east of the country to take their “last chance” to flee a feared Russian assault, as outrage over civilian deaths around the capital Kyiv cast a shadow over halting negotiations to stop the six week-old conflict.

Six weeks after invading its neighbour, Russia’s troops have withdrawn from Kyiv and Ukraine’s north and are focusing on the country’s southeast, where desperate attempts are under way to evacuate civilians.

The retreat from Kyiv revealed scenes of carnage, including in the town of Bucha, that Ukraine said were evidence of Russian war crimes, and which triggered a fresh wave of Western sanctions against Moscow.

Zelensky warned that Russia was now massing forces in a bid to realise its “ill ambitions” in the eastern Donbas region, home to Moscow-backed separatists.

“These few days may be the last chance to leave,” said Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the Donbas region of Lugansk, in an appeal to residents to leave, adding that all the cities in the region were under fire.

Meanwhile the prospect of a negotiated end to the war seemed to fade further as Russia accused Kyiv of changing its demands since face-to-face talks in Istanbul last month.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a draft agreement presented by the Ukraine side on Wednesday suggested they were not interested in stopping the fighting.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak hit back that if Moscow wanted to show its readiness to talk, “it should lower the degree of hostility”.

And Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba went further, saying Lavrov’s denials of Russian responsibility in Bucha and elsewhere “makes him an accomplice to these crimes”.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu of Turkey, which is hosting the negotiations, said the images of bodies from Bucha and other areas had “overshadowed” what had been an “emerging positive atmosphere”.

Gaiday said previously that more than 1,200 people had been evacuated from Lugansk on Wednesday, but that efforts were being hampered by artillery fire, with some areas already inaccessible.

For those unable to leave, he said, tonnes of food, medicine and hygiene products were being delivered as part of a massive humanitarian effort.

Shells and rockets were also slamming into the industrial city of Severodonetsk, the easternmost city held by Ukrainian forces.

“We have nowhere to go, it’s been like this for days,” 38-year-old Volodymyr told AFP, standing opposite a burning building in Severodonetsk.

More than 11 million people have been displaced since Russia invaded on February 24, with the stated aim to “de-Nazify” and “demilitarise” Ukraine and support Moscow-backed separatists.

Moscow is currently believed to be trying to create a land link between occupied Crimea and the statelets in Donbas.

Ukrainian forces are also regrouping for the offensive, including on a two-lane highway through the rolling eastern plains connecting Kharkiv and Donetsk.

Trench positions were being dug, and the road was littered with anti-tank obstacles.