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Russia has announced it will not ask the UN Security Council to vote on Friday on its draft resolution on humanitarian relief for Ukraine, which has been criticised for making no mention of Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour.
It will instead use the scheduled council session to again raise allegations that the United States has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine, claims that Washington says are disinformation and part of a potential “false-flag operation” by Moscow.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzya, made the announcement at a Security Council meeting on Thursday afternoon that was called by six western countries, including the US, to get an update on the three-week-old war.
He said Russia is not withdrawing the resolution but decided not to seek a vote presently because of what he called “unprecedented pressure” from western nations, especially the US and Albania, on UN member states to oppose the measure.
Western diplomats had criticised the draft, saying it did not go far enough in calling on Moscow to withdraw its troops.
Barbara Woodward, the UK’s envoy to the UN, said the Russian document was "cynical" and had “glaring omissions”.
France and Mexico drafted their own resolution on aid to Ukraine, but withdrew the document, which would have likely been quashed by a Russian veto.
They instead plan to put it for a vote late next week in the 193-nation General Assembly, where no country has a veto.
The assembly voted overwhelmingly this month to deplore Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Diplomats met in New York against a backdrop of spiralling violence in Ukraine, where Russian forces have killed hundreds of civilians and reduced urban areas to rubble during their three-week invasion.
At least 780 civilians have been confirmed killed, including 58 children, mostly due to air strikes and artillery, the UN says. The actual number is likely to be many times higher.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strikes on dozens of health centres will have “devastating consequences” on Ukrainians that could “reverberate for years or decades to come”.
Addressing the UN Security Council, Dr Tedros, director general of the WHO, said 43 healthcare centres had been attacked, killing a dozen people, including medical staff, since Russia launched its multi-front military assault on February 24.
“Attacks on health care are a violation of international humanitarian law — anytime, anywhere,” Dr Tedros told diplomats in New York.
“The disruption to services and supplies is posing an extreme risk to people with cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and TB, which are among the leading causes of mortality in Ukraine.”
Fighting was “exacerbating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic” and would increase risks from measles, pneumonia, polio and other infectious diseases, he added.
Ukraine’s 35,000 mental health patients were also seeing care disrupted.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday said more than 928,000 people had been cut off from electricity and 259,000 others had lost access to gas, mostly in the Chernihivska, Donetska, Kyivska, Mykolaivska and Zaporizka regions.
Rescuers were searching for survivors in the ruins of a theatre hit by a Russian air strike in the besieged city of Mariupol — an attack that Moscow denies — amid a spate of air and artillery attacks across the Eastern European country.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
