The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the so-called "referendums" that Russia held in the occupied Ukrainian territories – in the "DNR", "LNR", Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
The resolution was supported by 143 out of 193 UN member states. Only five countries were against: Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua and Russia. Thirty-five countries abstained, including China, Armenia, Kazakhstan and even Eritrea, which voted against the resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Ten countries did not participate in the voting.
The resolution emphasizes that the illegal referendums held from September 23 to 27 in the occupied Ukrainian regions have no legal force and cannot be the basis for changing the status of the regions. She calls on all countries and UN organizations not to recognize the attempt to annex the regions of Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on the resolution: he called it historic and thanked those who supported the document. “The world has had its say: an attempt at annexation costs nothing and will never be recognized by free states,” he tweeted.
The UN Security Council wanted to vote to condemn the “referendums” on September 30, when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed agreements in the Kremlin on “joining the Russian Federation” with the “DPR”, “LPR”, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. However, then Russia – a permanent member of the council – vetoed it. As a result, the General Assembly considered the document at a special session and refused to satisfy the Russian request for a secret ballot.
Referendums in the occupied regions of Ukraine were held literally at gunpoint. A resident of Kherson told The Insider that civilians with a ballot box and ballots, accompanied by people with machine guns in masks, came to almost every courtyard to collect votes. Constitutional lawyer Elena Lukyanova, in a conversation with The Insider, noted that by annexing the occupied regions of Ukraine, Putin even violated Russian law.