(AP) — A week before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s U.N. ambassador has claimed that the West is driven by its determination to destroy Russia. And Vassily Nebenzia declared: “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”
Western ambassadors shot back, accusing Russia of using a Security Council meeting it called on lessons learned from the failure to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists that began in 2014 to justify what France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere called “the unjustifiable” — Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022. Friday’s council meeting put a spotlight on the deep chasm between the warring parties.
