UNITED NATIONS, March 10. /TASS/. The West significantly watered down the UN General Assembly resolution on Ukraine that was adopted on February 23, excluding Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s "peace plan," Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said in an interview with The Dive YouTube channel.
"The resolution that they promoted was so watered down from the initial expectations of the Ukrainians and the Westerners. With some amendments that Belarus was proposing, I think we could even have supported it because it’s so toothless on a lot of issues," the diplomat pointed out. "They wanted figures and they still got a little bit less than they were hoping for. It was enormous hand twisting and blackmailing, and some procedural - I would say - some procedural slyness was displayed in the whole thing but they managed to get a text which is far from their expectations," Polyansky added.
"I think even President Zelensky was not aware of the contents of the resolution because he was saying - if I’m not mistaken, to an Italian colleague on the eve of the vote - that the General Assembly was about to endorse his peace plan but his peace plan was excluded there because a lot of countries were saying ‘no, we will not support Zelensky’s peace plan because it’s not constructive, it’s an ultimatum.’ And this peace plan was deleted, again, to get more votes," the Russian diplomat noted.
Ukraine, backed by Western countries, earlier presented a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly, allegedly aimed at achieving peace. The document demanded that Russian troops be withdrawn from Ukraine, and blamed the conflict entirely on Moscow. It also called on the international community to double efforts to find a solution, urged the parties to respect their obligations towards civilians and prisoners of war and highlighted "the need to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Ukraine through independent national or international investigations and prosecutions." The resolution was adopted with 141 votes in favor, seven against and 32 abstentions.