The Ukrainian leader not only used his UN speech to call for Russian fighters and officials to be prosecuted for war crimes, but to lambast the Security Council as an essentially useless body that, thanks to its design, had failed for decades to uphold peace around the world.
“Where is the security that the Security Council is supposed to be guaranteed?” he asked incredulously.
The veto power Russia enjoys as one of the five permanent members of the 15-member Security Council has enabled the country to carry on its campaign of violence and mass death in Ukraine without fear of international intervention, Zelensky said.
He called for the Security Council to either be immediately reformed to ensure fairer global representation and for Russia’s veto to be removed, or for the body to be dissolved altogether.
“Are you ready to close the UN?” he said. “Do you think that the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.”
Zelensky offered to host a global conference in Kyiv in order to determine how to reform the global security system so as to prevent future violence elsewhere in the world.
“We must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generation an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges,” he said.
