Zelenskyy says Russia should be removed from UN Security Council

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed in detail the Russian forces’ killing of citizens and urged that Russia should be removed from the U.N. Security Council.

The president attended an opening meeting of the U.N. Security Council held at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday (local time) and said that Russia should be removed as a permanent member of the Security Council so that it won’t be able to stop the council’s decisions on its invasion. He called for the reform of the U.N. and added that the organization should be dissolved without an alternative. He criticized the U.N., which has been powerless with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as Russia exercises its veto power as a permanent member.

President Zelenskyy compared Russia’s mass killing of Ukrainians to the ISIS terrorists, an extremist terror group. “The memory of the killed civilians. Who were killed in apartments, houses, blown up by grenades. Who were crushed by tanks in civilian cars in the middle of the road. For fun,” he said. “How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?”

“Everyone who gave criminal orders and fulfilled them by killing people will face a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials,” he also said. Nuremberg trials were held in 1945 against Nazi war criminals by the U.S., the U.K., France, etc.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the White House shares Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s frustration that Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council during Tuesday’s briefing to a question regarding the reform of the U.N. Security Council.


Jae-Dong Yu jarrett@donga.com