UN Vote Against Russia: Why India Chose To Abstain From Voting Yet Again
UN General Assembly Thursday condemns Russia over Ukraine invasion and urges Moscow to remove troops from that country. 141 countries support UN resolution passed at emergency special session.
New Delhi: With the Russia-Ukraine war completing one year Friday, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) once again passed a resolution condemning Russia’s actions against Ukraine, asking Moscow to remove its troops from that country. India chose to continue with its stance and abstained from voting against Moscow, given its G20 Presidency when shifting positions would have “come at a cost”, multiple sources told ABP Live.
The resolution — Principles of the Charter of the United Nations Underlying a Comprehensive, Just and Lasting Peace in Ukraine — was adopted by a vote of 141 countries in favour, seven against and 32 abstentions at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Thursday.
Reiterating New Delhi’s “concern” over the situation in Ukraine, Ruchira Kamboj, India’s Ambassador to the UN, said it chose to abstain from the vote due to “inherent limitations” in the UN resolution.
Since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022, India has been abstaining from every resolution adopted against Russia at the UNGA, UN Security Council (UNSC) and at the UN Human Rights Council. This time also, India chose to follow the same path despite being the current chair of G20, as changing the stance at this time would have invited criticism from either of the sides, official sources told ABP Live.
Voting against Russia, the sources said, would have put “additional pressure” on India to continue with that language as a “common template” to be used for all the outcome documents of the G20 meetings, the sources added.
The G20 Finance Ministers Meeting is currently under way in India, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already raised the issue of sanctions on Russia indirectly pushing countries like India to join the bandwagon. The sources also said that the US and Europe do recognise the role India is playing in terms of “silent diplomacy”, urging Russia not to continue with this war while also having a dialogue with Ukraine.
They added that National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval’s visit to Moscow earlier this month and meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin was a step in that direction. It was "significant" that he undertook that trip to Moscow in continuation with his visit to Washington DC vowing to strategically align with the US in critical and emerging technology.
Two days prior to the voting, Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, spoke to Doval over the telephone. “It is very important to protect the territorial integrity of any state in the world in order to prevent any attempts by one country to appropriate the territory of another one in the future,” he said, as quoted by the Ukraine President's official website.
Yermak added: “Our goals are transparent and clear - we do not claim a single centimeter of Russian territory, we just want to get ours back.”
According to a former Indian envoy to the UN, who did not wish to be named, there is diplomacy happening in the “background”, and the Russians are aware that they will have to withdraw at some point.
Excerpts from PR @ruchirakamboj’s explanation of vote at the #UNGA Emergency Special Session on #Ukraine today. pic.twitter.com/tUptpHj09j
— India at UN, NY (@IndiaUNNewYork) February 24, 2023
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'UN Resolution Is Not An Answer To The Crisis'
Asoke Mukerji, veteran diplomat and former Permanent Representative of India to the UN in New York, told ABP Live: “We could not have changed our position all of a sudden when we have been constantly abstaining from such resolutions passed by the UNGA. This is about principles.”
He said: “There has to be a political settlement to this crisis, and the (UN) resolution is not an answer to that. The question of Eastern Ukraine and Minsk Agreement remains unanswered. There is a UN Security Council resolution 2202 on Ukraine, which upheld the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Why is nobody talking about that?”
According to Mukerji, India, like other developing and poorer countries, is having to face direct consequences of the unilateral sanctions that the West is imposing on Russia.
“The sanctions have destroyed the integrity of the global financial and trading system. We will all suffer an impact on our economic growth, but did the West consult India on this before imposing these sanctions? The war can only be ended if there is a sustainable political settlement of the Eastern Ukraine Question,” he stressed.
However, according to Dilip Sinha, former India's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva from 2012 to 2014, the resolution "only talks of Russia withdrawing its troops from Ukraine". "This is an invasion and that cannot be tolerated. This much India could have said,” he said.
“We have to take a stand when it comes to violation of international law. Nothing justifies invasion. This war will continue to drag and the main question here is how long is Russia willing to go before Russia loses the war. They know they certainly cannot win the war. India needs to uphold the fact that territorial integrity and sovereignty is sacrosanct,” Sinha added.
In her ‘Explanation of Vote’, Kamboj said “escalation of hostilities is in no one’s interest”, and that “India remains steadfastly committed to multilateralism and upholds the principles of the UN Charter”.
She added: “India’s approach to the Ukraine conflict will continue to be people-centric. We are providing both humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and economic support to some of our neighbours in the Global South under economic distress, even as they stare at the escalating costs of food, of fuel, and of fertilizers - which has been a consequential fall out of the ongoing conflict."
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