India has abstained on a draft resolution tabled in the UN Security Council which condemned Russia’s “illegal referenda” and annexation of four Ukrainian territories and called for an immediate cessation of violence while underlining the need to find pathways for a return to the negotiating table.
The 15-nation UN Security Council on Friday voted on the draft resolution tabled by the US and Albania that condemns Russia’s “organisation of illegal so-called referenda in regions within Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.” The resolution declares that Russia’s “unlawful actions” with regards to the “illegal so-called referenda” taken on September 23 to 27 this year in parts of Ukraine’s regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya that are under Russia’s temporary control can have “no validity” and cannot form the basis for any alteration of the status of these regions of Ukraine, including any “purported annexation” of any of these regions by Moscow.
The resolution failed to get adopted as Russia vetoed it. Of the 15-nation Council, 10 nations voted for the resolution while China, Gabon, India and Brazil abstained.
In the explanation of the vote, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj said that India was deeply disturbed by the recent turn of developments in Ukraine and New Delhi has always advocated that no solution can ever arrive at the cost of human lives.