Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky questioned the effectiveness of the UN Security Council in a taped address on Tuesday, repeating his comments from his virtual speech at the UN earlier on Tuesday.
“The UN Security Council exists and yet there is no security in the world for anyone,” Zelensky said, “The only guilty party is one country, Russia, which discredits all of the institutions and blocks the global architecture for the sake of spreading lies and justifying the evil it commits.”
“I’m sure the world will see this and make conclusions,” he said.
Zelensky also repeated his call for Russia to be removed from the UN Security Council.
“I suggest to the UN Security Council, and all other countries who honor international law, some specific actions that can change the situation. In particular, we are talking about a general conference in Kyiv to see how we can reform the global architecture in light of the Russian Federation still holding permanent seat in the United Nations,” he said.
Zelensky addressed his conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron in which they spoke about the humanitarian situation in the temporary occupied regions of Ukraine.
“We also agreed that France will provide necessary technical support and aid to investigate crimes of Russian occupiers in Ukraine,” he said.
Zelensky also pushed for new sanctions after the massacre of civilians in Bucha.
“This is not just about how our people are going to assess those sanctions but in fact how western societies are going to evaluate these sanctions after what the world has seen in Bucha,” he said, “Sanctions have to really respond to the severity of the crimes committed in Ukraine.”
He noted that the “hardest battles” are still being fought in Donbas and Kharkiv.
Zelensky also said that he is preparing to meet with the president of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
“Together will be working in Kyiv, this will be appreciated by many people in the world because now Kyiv is the capital of the global democracy and fight for freedom for everyone on the European continent,” Zelensky said.