Queen Nwabueze
Embattled President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky has asked that the United Nations be dissolved if it is incapacitated of dealing with Russia, querying why Russia has always had the veto power and “right to kill.”
Zelensky said this in an impassioned virtual address to the UN Security Council, demanding that Russia be kicked off the Security Council or that the UN should simply dissolve itself, because the entire structure of global security established in 1945 had failed.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelRussia had been allowed to commit the “most terrible war crimes we have seen since the Second World War”, Zelensky said, “sowing death” and acting like a “coloniser from ancient times.”
Speaking at a UK-convened meeting of the UN’s most powerful body in New York, days after the discovery of hundreds of murdered civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Zelensky noted that Russia has a veto on all UN resolutions as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, known as the P5, Permanent Five, or Big Five.
Other members of the P5 are China, France, the UK, and the US.
He also said any Russian military leader or politician who had given an order that led to the carnage in Ukraine should be brought before a court “similar to the Nuremberg tribunals”.
He added: “It’s clear that the world’s key institution, that is supposed to force any aggressor into accepting peace, simply cannot effectively operate.”
Zelensky said the actions of Russian troops were “no different from other terrorists” such as Islamic State.
He said: “Here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.
“Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the UN? Do you think the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, you need to act immediately. The system must be reformed immediately, so the veto is not the right to kill.”
In his address, Zelensky also lambasted the UN for failing to prevent massacres in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya. If “tyranny” had been countered earlier by the UN, then his country would not now be at war, he said.
Russia had been allowed to commit the “most terrible war crimes we have seen since the Second World War”, Zelensky said, “sowing death” and acting like a “coloniser from ancient times”.
He added: “It’s clear that the world’s key institution, that is supposed to force any aggressor into accepting peace, simply cannot effectively operate.”
Zelensky said the actions of Russian troops were “no different from other terrorists” such as Islamic State.
But he said: “Here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.
“Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the UN? Do you think the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, you need to act immediately. The system must be reformed immediately, so the veto is not the right to kill.”
