Earlier in the day, the UN General Assembly suspended Russia from the Human Rights Council in a 93-24 vote, with 58 countries abstaining.
"I applaud the overwhelming vote today in the General Assembly of the United Nations to kick Russia off the UN Human Rights Council," Biden said on Thursday. Biden said the vote marks a meaningful step by the international community further demonstrating how President Vladimir Putin has made Russia an "international pariah."
The countries that voted against include Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, the CAR, China, Republic of the Congo, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mali, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, India, Kuwait, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE are among those that abstained.
Serbia, Israel, and Turkey were among those that supported the move to suspend Russia from the body.
Double Standards or Utter Hypocrisy?
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. The Russian Defense Ministry said the operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only, but Ukrainian forces have been using typical terrorist methods, such as hiding behind civilians and positioning weapons systems in civilian areas.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia repeatedly pointed out that Ukrainian forces and radicals are responsible for abuses of civilians and POWs, as well as violations of humanitarian agreements. He also said Russia should not have withdrawn its forces from the town of Bucha in light of the alleged atrocities that emerged after their pullout.
"Now we’re seeing blatantly criminally staged events with Ukrainian civilians killed by their own radicals … those killed in the areas from which the Russian forces withdrew after encouraging peace negotiations in Istanbul. Now it turns out that we shouldn’t have withdrawn. I’m talking about Bucha first and foremost," the diplomat said.
The US has openly said it cannot independently verify the reports of alleged atrocities in Bucha. Meanwhile, the New York Times story about the authenticity of a video from Bucha, where prisoners of war from Russia were killed, received almost no publicity, which clearly proves Washington's bias towards the events in Ukraine, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said.
Earlier, the Russian envoy to the UN called on the international community to address the shocking crimes committed by nationalist battalions against its own civilians in Mariupol, which include torturing captives to death in cellars and carving swastikas into their dead bodies. Particularly the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion, whose members have engaged in hostilities against the people of Donbas, committed outright war crimes, including kidnapping, torture and mass looting, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported in 2016.
But Western governments tend to view the events in a one-sided way.