UNSC to meet on Russian referendum for former Ukrainian territories
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The United Nations Security Council will be convening for talks on the referendum held in territories formerly recognized as Ukrainian.
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Ukraine, Albania, and the United States' Ambassadors to the United Nations after a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the war in Ukraine, August 24, 2023, at United Nations headquarters (AP)
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will hold Friday a meeting on the referenda held in territories previously recognized as Ukrainian for their reunification with Russia, a UNSC source told Russian news agency Sputnik.
The official account of Albania's Permanent Mission to the United Nations on X posted earlier about a meeting on Ukraine scheduled for Thursday.
Albania is presiding over the Security Council during September after the United States chaired the body in August.
"The US and Albania requested an SC meeting on Ukraine for September 8. The topic is referenda," the source said.
Sputnik's source further claimed that the US and Albia requested that the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo be rapporteur.
Talks about the UNSC meeting come as a hundred foreign observers from 40 countries attended the referenda in the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had threatened Russia with new sanctions in the event of referenda after White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated that the US condemned the DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson referenda to join Russia as "sham" actions and asserted that the US would not recognize the results.
The referenda, according to Sullivan, reflected Moscow's recent military defeats, including ceding sizable amounts of land to the Ukrainian military.
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Following the referenda, and after the overwhelming majority of people voted in favor of reunification with Russia, President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he reflected on the recent history of the region and how Russia was broken apart.
The collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a decision taken by partisan leaders who did not take the opinion of the people into consideration before making their decision, Putin said.
The landmark address had been awaited since the results of the referenda of the liberated Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions' accession to Russia came out.
"Contrary to the direct will of the people, the [Soviet Union] was ruined, and the people were confronted with a fact. We cannot go back to the past. And Russia no longer needs it. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single state for centuries," President Putin added.
"There is nothing stronger than the determination of these people to return to their true historical fatherland," the Russian leader underlined.
He announced that the people living in the DPR, LPR, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia "have become [Russian] citizens forever. I want people in Kiev and their real owners to listen to me; we call on Kiev to enter an immediate ceasefire to end the war they initiated back in 2014."
