“I know how the UN works. I believe that [Ukraine’s] permanent representative would not do this on his own. This means that he was ordered to do it,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is quoted as saying in a Sputnik report.
“This goes against Christian values. It’s beyond good and evil. Thanks to the current Ukrainian authorities, however, we are accustomed to the fact that someone in their country treats Russians, and anyone who refuses to dance to the pipe of neo-Nazis, precisely like that,” Lavrov added.
Ukraine, which is chairing the UN Security Council this month, has cited “lack of precedent” as the reason for blocking a commemorative UN Security Council resolution for Vitaly Churkin. As a result, only a press statement was released and published.
If in explaining its decision, the Ukranian Foreign Ministry meant to imply that former UNSC ambassadors didn’t have commemorative resolutions passed after their death, then it is clearly missing the difference in circumstances.
Vitaly Churkin was not only the longest-serving ambassador in the UN Security Council but “a diplomatic giant” who “stood out among all the other 193 ambassadors,” as stated by UK’s Ambassador to the UN Matthew Raycroft.
The longest-serving ambassador died unexpectedly while on active duty, this has never happened before in the history of the UNSC, and if not for anything else (including Churkin’s enormous accomplishments), this reason alone warrants a special commemorative resolution.
Sputnik is reporting the following details:
Earlier today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook that this decision is “the essence” of the current Ukrainian authorities.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also commented that Ukraine’s behavior is “not at all as important as the loss that Russia’s diplomacy had suffered.”
Russian ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin passed away on Monday, February 20, in New York. Churkin had served as Russia’s permanent representative to the UN and the Russian representative in the UN Security Council from April 2006. The diplomat would have turned 65 on Tuesday, February 21.
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