“The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn’t,” Zelensky says in his nightly Facebook address after his virtual speech to the UN panel in New York on Tuesday.
The UN, he says, “is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created”. He goes on to blame Russia – a permanent Security Council member, for its dysfunction.
Russia, Zelensky says, “discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates”.
The Ukrainian president has called for Russia to be removed from the panel, where it wields veto power, saying in his Facebook address that Russia’s role at the UN is “to block everything constructive and use global architecture in order to spread lies and justify the evil it does”.
“Now is a crucial moment, especially for Western leaders,” he continues, calling for the next round of sanctions against Russia to be “commensurate with the gravity of the occupiers’ war crimes”.
Ukraine, he says, is preparing for visits from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell in the coming days.
“Now Kyiv is the capital of global democracy, the capital of the struggle for freedom for all on the European continent,” says Zelensky.