The world’s top diplomatic stage at the UN Security Council (UNSC) devolved into the Russian foreign minister calling Volodymyr Zelensky a “b*****d” and walking out after a round of condemnation and accusations of war crimes aimed at Russia.
Almost all foreign ministers of the 15 UNSC members present at Thursday’s meeting expressed growing frustration with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with even Moscow’s closest allies taking an increasingly dim view.
Many called out Vladimir Putin for the recent nuclear threats he has made, with the strength of tone of that criticism depending on their government’s stance on the war.
Eventually Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called the Ukrainian president a “b*****d” and slammed the “collective west” for regarding him as “their b*****d”.
“Such outrages remain unpunished because the United States and their allies with the connivance of international human rights institutes have been covering up the crimes of the Kyiv regime based on the policy of ‘Zelensky might be a b*****d, but he’s our b*****d’,” the foreign minister said.
He walked out after his speech and remained absent for most of the session having already arrived 90 minutes late – missing the UN chief Antonio Guterres’s briefing.
“What’s particularly cynical here is the position of states that are pumping Ukraine full of weapons and training their soldiers,” Mr Lavrov said.
“The goal is… to drag out the fighting as long as possible in spite of the victims and destruction in order to wear down and weaken Russia.
“The intentional fomenting of this conflict by the collective west remains unpunished.”
Addressing the council immediately after Mr Lavrov, Britain’s foreign secretary James Cleverly said he was “not surprised” that Russia’s foreign minister left the chamber after receiving the “collective condemnation of this council”.
