UNITED NATIONS, September 28. /TASS/. The Russian delegation quitted the United Nations General Assembly during Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s speech at the U.N. summit on sustainable development, a top-ranking Russian diplomat told TASS late on Sunday.
"We left the meeting hall in protest against his openly politicized and aggressive speech which had nothing to do with the summit’s topic," the diplomat said.
One Russian diplomat however remained in the hall. When asked why this diplomat stayed, the source said, "The Russian side is in the habit of heeding its opponents and not ignoring their words."
Initially, Poroshenko was to be the 14th to speak at the summit but took the floor 26th, just before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Under the United Nations rules, is a speaker cannot take the floor at a time appointed for him or her due to any reason, he or she is automatically placed "at the end of the line." The Ukrainian president spoke in a group of heads of state and government, so he was the last to take the floor in this group before the "ministerial" part of the session that was opened by Russia’s Lavrov.
"We don’t know for sure was it Poroshenko’s deliberate intention to be postpone his speech or not," a representative of the U.N. secretariat told TASS. However he said he thought it had been done deliberately by the Ukrainian delegation.
According to TASS information, the Russian foreign minister was offered to postpone his speech but Lavrov refused not to change his further schedule.