Russia's right of veto frustrates the UN Security Council resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine

Vasily Nebenzya, Russian ambassador to the UN, this Friday at the agency's headquarters in New York. Seth Wenig (AP)

The UN Security Council met this Friday for the third time in five days to rule on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The vote on the text, a joint initiative of the US and Albania that has garnered numerous supporters in the last 24 hours, only raised one question: Russia would exercise its veto power, but what about China?

With its abstention - a way of safeguarding equidistance and, at the same time, veiledly supporting Moscow - China dragged India and the United Arab Emirates along.

The resolution had the favorable vote of 11 of the 15 members.

Russia also holds the presidency of the Council this month, in accordance with the calendar approved last fall.

The draft resolution, with last-minute amendments that delayed the start of the meeting, reminded Russia of all its international obligations, as a signatory state of letters and treaties that the offensive launched this Thursday by President Vladimir Putin has turned into a dead letter.

The draft underlined Moscow's theoretical commitment to Article 2 of the United Nations Charter on resolving disputes by peaceful means and refraining from the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of another country.

With the invasion of Ukraine, the initial draft maintained, Russia has broken the Helsinki Final Act of the OSCE (1975) and the Budapest memorandum on security guarantees to Ukraine signed in 1994, as well as a Council resolution (2202, 2015), aimed at implementing the Minsk agreements, which theoretically should have put an end to the entrenched war in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.

The text also supported the call for dialogue by António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, as well as the unmitigated condemnation of the Russian "aggression" against Ukraine, which it described as "breaking international peace and security".

The text, whose initial forcefulness was tempered by the amendments, urged Russia to back down, cease the use of force and withdraw its forces from Ukraine "immediately, totally and unconditionally", as the US ambassador underlined. USA, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Also to revoke the recognition of the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, where the conflict began in April 2014. Despite the amendments, the main one being the substitution of the word "condemn" for "deplore", the allegations of the majority of the ambassadors used the most categorical terms of rejection.

“One country is invading another, and Russia is the aggressor.

There are no half measures (...) We have an obligation not to look the other way.

Russia has chosen to cause unimaginable pain to the people of Ukraine and to its own citizens,” said Thomas-Greenfield.

British representative Barbara Woodward pointed out that Russia's intervention is not an exercise in self-defense.

“They were talking about protecting Donetsk and Lugansk, but they are bombing Kiev.

The resolution is a message to the Ukrainian people, to the world that the rules we established must be respected, and to the brave Russian citizens who are protesting” against aggression, Woodward said.

Sweden's call to co-sponsor the draft resolution was joined in the last 24 hours by Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Luxembourg and New Zealand, as well as three countries that sit on the Security Council as France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, reports Efe.

The US has sought in recent hours the support of other allies without a presence in the highest UN forum, such as Australia or the European Union.

The hermetic equidistance of China, which was recorded in the Council held on Monday, allowed to guess the meaning of its vote this Friday, despite the diplomatic pressure received in recent days from the West.

The same thing happened with India, which in the tense session on Wednesday - blown up by Putin's parallel announcement of the launch of a "special military operation" in Ukraine - had limited itself to stating its concern for its 16,000 nationals trapped in Ukraine, whose evacuation was discussed on Thursday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Putin.

The direction of Brazil's vote was also another unknown, although two diplomatic sources cited by Reuters pointed out that it would support the resolution as it finally did.

Although the resolution has not been adopted, the intention of the US and its allies was to demonstrate to Moscow its international isolation, nuanced by the disguised support of Beijing.

“We are working on the Security Council resolution.

I hope that we can take action in the next few hours or days... and if we do not succeed in the Security Council we will go immediately to the General Assembly”, of 193 members, a diplomat with a seat in the Council said on Thursday. , protected by anonymity, on the draft that the declaration of war by Russia prevented from voting.

Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are non-binding, unlike those of the Council.

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