Ukraine urges U.N. vote to preserve its territory

UNITED NATIONS — Ukraine’s foreign minister on Wednesday urged the world’s nations as the anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears to prove they stand for the United Nations Charter and vote in favor of a U.N. resolution calling for a peace that ensures his war-ravaged country’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.”

Dmytro Kuleba told an emergency special session of the U.N. General Assembly that despite Moscow’s “empty calls” for negotiations, “Russia still wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation.”

He said the resolution, to be put to a vote today in the 193member world body, “will contribute to our joint efforts to bring the war to an end as well as protect the fundamental principles of international law and the U.N. Charter.”

Kuleba said he had a message for countries that want to be friends with both sides and want an end to the war “with whatever result”: In this war there are not two sides, “there is an aggressor and a victim.”

“Never in recent history has the line between good and evil been so clear,” he said. “One country merely wants to live. The other wants to kill and destroy. There is no other country in the world that wants peace as much as Ukraine does.”

If countries don’t want to take Ukraine’s side, Kuleba urged them to take the side of the U.N. Charter, international law and five General Assembly resolutions adopted since the invasion and stand up for the preservation of every country’s territorial integrity.

Assembly President Csaba Korosi and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the emergency special session, and almost 80 countries will speak before the vote.

Guterres called Russia’s invasion “an affront to our collective conscience” that violates the U.N. Charter and challenges “the cornerstone principles and values of our multilateral system.”