Russia will chair the UN Security Council for a month from Saturday. “A shame” and a “bad joke” for kyiv, which denounces “a slap in the face of the international community”.
April 1 marks the start of Russia’s rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, which Ukraine strongly denounces. For its part, it is the recognition of the Ukrainian famine of the Holodomor as genocide by the French deputies that Moscow castigates. Franceinfo takes stock of what to remember from the day on the conflict between the two countries.
Moscow takes over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, kyiv denounces “a shame”
Russia took on Saturday the presidency of the UN Security Council for a month, provoking strong reactions from kyiv.
>> War in Ukraine: five questions about Russia’s presidency of the UN Security Council in April
“The Russian presidency of the United Nations Security Council is a slap in the face of the international community”, said Dmytro on Saturday Kouleba, head of Ukrainian diplomacy. On Thursday, he had already described the Russian presidency as “bad joke”. For Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, this Russian presidency is “a shame” and one “another symbolic blow to the rules-based system of international relations”, he wrote on Twitter.
Russia Calls French Recognition of Holodomor Genocide ‘Anti-Russian Zeal’
Moscow does not digest the vote, Tuesday March 28, of the French National Assembly in favor of a resolution recognizing the Holodomor, a famine caused at the beginning of the 1930s in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities, at the origin of several million deaths, like a genocide. An act of “repulsive anti-Russian zeal”, castigated the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, on Saturday. She denounced in a press release “an empty and senseless action” from France “hastily organized to please the kyiv regime”.
kyiv claims to have exchanged with Paris on the “peace plan” that France wants to support
On an official Telegram messaging channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained that he had exchanged “one hour” on the phone with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on “defence cooperation between Ukraine and France”. The exchange also focused, according to the Ukrainian leader, on the “future steps of implementation” of the “peace plan” to end the conflict presented last September by kyiv to its allies.
Rally in kyiv in front of a monastery suspected of being linked to Russia
Dozens of worshipers gathered in front of a famous monastery in Kiev, the Lavra of the Caves, whose monks, accused of being linked to Moscow, have been targeted since Wednesday by an expulsion notice and whose head, Metropolitan Pavlo, was questioned on Saturday. According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Metropolitan Pavlo is suspected of having “justified the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and glorified its participants”. “They say that I support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. I said, I say and I will say: I condemn all attempts against our state and what Russia (and Vladimir) Putin have done is unjustifiable “, for his part affirmed the metropolitan, in a video relayed by several Ukrainian media.