A majority of United Nations members voted Wednesday to condemn Russia’s annexation of territory in Ukraine.
In total, 143 nations condemned the last month’s annexation and demanded that Russia “withdraw all of its military forces” from the region. Only five countries voted against the resolution, including Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Nicaragua, while 33 countries abstained.
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“The Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine are areas that, in part, are or have been under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation, as a result of aggression, in violation of the sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” the resolution declared.
One of the countries that voted in favor of condemning Russia was Saudi Arabia, which recently stoked ire from the United States following the OPEC+ decision to slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day.
Countries that abstained included India, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
Late last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to annex four regions in Ukraine, including the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, following referendums that were denounced by the West as illegitimate. Putin signed the annexation into law this month.
The annexation came against the backdrop of a flood of military setbacks in Ukraine. Shortly after signing the agreement, Russian forces were forced to pull back from the eastern city of Lyman, a key city in the Donetsk region.
With his military failures in Ukraine mounting, Putin sent much of the world into a frenzy last month, pledging to defend the “territorial integrity of our motherland” by “all the means at our disposal” — widely seen as a nuclear threat.
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NATO has since announced plans to hold nuclear deterrence exercises as President Joe Biden warns of an increased risk of nuclear “Armageddon.”
“I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly,” Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper about Putin’s offensive in Ukraine in an interview this week.
