The Union of Ukrainians in Portugal, the Ukrainian World Congress’ long-term member, sent an appeal to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres with a call to exclude Russia from the UN. The Union cited that the UN is “an international institution whose goal is to achieve peace between peoples, and not to legalize aggression by voting without alternatives.”
“Today, Putin uses the UN exclusively as a forum for his propaganda. Russia violated all agreements that guaranteed peace. Mr. UN Secretary General! You have all the legal arguments to officially remind you that Russia is not formally a member of the UN Security Council. After the USSR collapse, Russia unilaterally appropriated the right of the UN membership, as well as many others,” the Union of Ukrainians in Portugal stated in the appeal.
The appeal also draws Mr. Guterres’s attention to the fact that the Russians will not limit their aggression to the seizure of Ukrainian territories only. “Remember Putin – Medvedev’s phrase: ‘Russia from Vladivostok to Lisbon.’ Today’s war, fought in Ukrainian cities and villages, is not and has never been exclusively between Russia and Ukraine. This war is between barbaric Russian totalitarianism and the civilization of the free world.”
On December 29, Ukrainians in Lisbon held a rally under the Russian embassy in Portugal, where they voiced a call to exclude Russia from the UN Security Council.
The Ukrainian government’s position reaffirms that global security cannot depend on terrorists’ actions and even more so on a paranoid dictator. Volodymyr Kozlov, the First Secretary for Political Affairs of the Embassy of Ukraine in Portugal, emphasized this at the rally.
Read the full text of the appeal here.
