- The UN Security Council is to deal with the current Ukraine crisis for the first time.
- Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the UN, requested a meeting of the UN body for Monday.
- The deliberations in New York are to be held in public and are expected to take place at 4:00 p.m.
The US and its western allies fear a Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are demanding that the roughly 100,000 Russian soldiers gathered at the Ukrainian border withdraw to the rear. The Security Council is less likely to find solutions to the conflict. Rather, the US could use the international stage as a means of exerting pressure on Moscow.
The US UN mission said: “As we continue our relentless pursuit of diplomacy to de-escalate tensions in the face of this serious threat to European and global peace and security, the UN Security Council is a crucial venue for diplomacy.”
Just 24 hours earlier, the US government had again rejected the Russian demand for commitments to end NATO’s eastward expansion. In response to the Russian proposal for new security arrangements, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear “that there are core principles that we are committed to upholding and defending,”