On a day that the Ukraine war took a turn for the worse, Russia’s ally Belarus suffered a stinging defeat in the elections to the Security Council.
Slovenia won the seat for East Europe with 153 votes to Belarus’ 38 votes on Tuesday at the 193-member General Assembly in what turned into a referendum on Russia as the Minsk government was seen as Moscow’s surrogate.
The election was held by secret ballot allowing countries to vote freely, unlike in Assembly measures involving Russia – the latest in February when 141 countries voted to require Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, and seven against with 32 abstentions and this time, some of those who abstained voted against Belarus.
The other four seats that were assigned to regions were uncontested as the regional groups agreed unanimously on their candidate.
South Korea was elected to the Asia Pacific seat and will replace the United Arab Emirates in January.
Since the Assembly has to vote on all the seats, South Korea received 180 votes, which showed the limited opposition by North Korea and its allies.
Guyana was elected to the Latin America Caribbean seat that Brazil will leave next year.
For the two seats up for election for Africa, Algeria was elected to replace Gabon and Sierra Leone to replace Ghana.
Earlier on Tuesday, a dam in a Ukraine area held by Russia was destroyed imperilling vast areas of Ukraine and moving up the war’s destruction a notch.
“One thing is clear: this is another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.
“We are seeing the effects in the city of Kherson, the town of Nova Kakhovka and 80 other towns and villages along the Dnipro River. Massive flooding.A Large-scale evacuations. Environmental devastation. Destruction of newly planted crops. And added threats to the highly threatened Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest nuclear facility,” he added.
The Security Council is set to take up the dam’s destruction at an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)
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