Putin accused of attempted genocide as UN passes resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
The United Nations officially condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today, with Boris Johnson saying that “we are united in our abhorrence to the evil actions” of Vladimir Putin.
The UN’s general assembly voted 147 to five, with 34 abstentions, to pass the motion of censure this evening as Ukraine’s largest cities come under intensified bombing.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya told delegates that Putin wants “to deprive Ukraine of the very right to exist” and that “the goal of Russia is not an occupation only – it is genocide”.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky this morning said that 2,000 civilians had died in the first week of Russia’s invasion, with non-military targets hit with heavy shelling in major cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol.
The capital Kyiv has also come under fire, but Russian troops are yet to reach the city. However, there is a 40-mile convoy of Russian forces that is not far outside the city.
“They know nothing about our capital,” Zelensky said.
“About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all.”
Ukraine’s South-East port city Mariupol came under increased fire, with the city’s mayor claiming hundreds were killed today alone.
Vadym Boichenko said the city of half a million people has faced “14 hours of non-stop attacks”, with Putin ratcheting up the violence in the wake of stiffer than expected resistance from the Ukraine military.
“There are many wounded and unfortunately many civilian dead, women, children, old people,” he said.
“Our railway link has been cut – they even went to the railway station and fired on our diesel locomotives so that people can’t be evacuated.
“So their mission is to destroy us, they have no intention of helping civilians.”
Speaking in the House of Commons today, Johnson said: “What we have seen already from Vladimir Putin’s regime in the use of the munitions that they have already been dropping on innocent civilians . . . in my view already fully qualifies as a war crime.”