The resolution, proposed by Ukraine and backed by the United States and the European Union, represented the latest effort to isolate President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over the annexation, which followed a March 16 referendum in the peninsula that has been internationally regarded as Ukrainian territory.
The resolution garnered 100 votes in favor, 11 votes against, with 58 abstentions. The two-page text does not identify Russia by name, but describes the referendum as “having no validity” and calls on countries not to recognize the redrawing of Ukraine’s borders.
Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia, called Russia’s actions “a direct violation of the United Nations Charter.”
Russia said Crimea should not have been part of Ukraine anyway, since it had been part of Russia for centuries until 1954, when the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev gave the peninsula to Ukraine, at the time a Soviet republic.
The most poignant argument came from Costa Rica. Small states have only the power of international law “to defend our sovereignty,” its ambassador, Eduardo Ulibarri, said. The resolution proposed by Ukraine, he said, would help to reaffirm that power.
The United States routinely ignores the General Assembly’s condemnations of its position on the Palestinian issue, for example. Neither Russia nor China has paid much attention to the General Assembly’s resolutions on Syria. And the high number of abstentions in the Ukraine resolution vote, including those by large, important countries, like China, India and South Africa, diluted the sympathy for Ukraine’s position.
Yulia V. Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian Prime Minister, in Kiev this month, confirming plans to run for president in elections on May 25. She ran unsuccessfully in 2010.
- Tags: U.N. General Assembly Russia Ukraine United Nations General Assembly United States European Union President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia Ukraine’s acting foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia Crimea Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev Soviet republic Costa Rica_ambassador_Eduardo Ulibarri Palestinian China Syria India South Africa Yulia V. Tymoshenko_former Ukrainian Prime Minister Kiev
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