US, Russia engage in heated exchange at UNSC session

The US and Russian representatives to the UN exchanged heated words on Tuesday during a Security Council session on Gaza.

In his remarks at the session, titled ‘Protection of civilians in armed conflict’, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia accused his ‘Western colleagues’ of allowing Israel to use hunger as a method of war.

Nebenzia slammed the US for vetoing multiple UN efforts towards a cease-fire in the Gaza conflict, which he said would ‘prevent mass starvation’ in the Palestinian enclave.

He said an alternative resolution drafted by the US does not ‘contain an appeal for a cease-fire and is aimed at broadening the UN umbrella to the acts of Israel’.

“This is not an alternative. This is yet another license to kill,” he added.

US deputy ambassador Robert Wood said: “I would just remind everyone in this room that the Russian Federation is a country that doesn’t contribute to resolving humanitarian crises. It creates them.”

Wood said the Ukrainian people have to ‘live under the savage, barbaric bombings and killings that they have to deal with every single day’. “So Russia is in no position, frankly to criticise any country while it continues to flagrantly and relentlessly violate the UN Charter,” he added.

“So when I hear Russia speak about its concerns about civilian infrastructure, etc., it is hard to take what it says seriously.”

Nebenzia then took the turn to tell the US envoy: “You should be ashamed of comparing the situation in Ukraine to Gaza.”

The US destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and it ‘should not be lecturing us’, he said.

“So before you next try to see a mote in my eye, you should see the beam in yours,” he added.

Wood again took the floor to address the Russian envoy’s remarks, saying he did not make a comparison between Ukraine and Gaza.