UNITED NATIONS, August 1. /TASS/. Russia has opposed the proposal for reserving in advance a separate meeting on Ukraine in the UN Security Council's schedule for August, but has no objections to holding such sessions whenever necessary, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said.

"This time our American colleagues and friends simply said that we need to discuss Ukraine, that we should not block the Council's ability to discuss Ukraine. But we are not blocking the possibility of discussing Ukraine in any way," he said.

The Russian diplomat pointed out that there were no formal reasons for including a meeting on Ukraine in the Security Council's monthly schedule, because there were no UNSC resolutions specifically on the situation in Ukraine.

"We would welcome a discussion on Ukraine, because we believe there are many issues that deserve the Council’s attention. But including the Ukrainian issue in schedule formally would mean crossing a red line. We've made that clear, but it's a matter of principle for the US presidency. This explains why we failed to agree on the agenda," Polyansky said.

Another item that caused Russia’s objection was the proposal for too many meetings on Syria.

"We and not only we have long been in favor of not discussing three separate aspects of the situation in Syria every month," he stressed.

Polyansky explained that the Western countries were for holding three meetings each month - on political issues, on humanitarian issues and on chemical weapons. He added that the political and humanitarian issues could be combined, while the discussion of chemical weapons could be held less frequently, for instance, once in three months, because otherwise the discussions would be meaningless.