Following demands by the United States and the Group of Seven, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted on Thursday to remove Russia from the 47-member UN Human Rights Council. The G7 previously removed Russia from its ranks as the G8 in March 2014, after Crimea rejoined Russia following a referendum.
The UNGA voted 93 to 24 on Thursday, with 58 countries abstaining from the vote. It is the first time a permanent member of the UN Security Council has been forcibly removed from any UN body.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said Moscow regrets its suspension from the UNHRC and will continue to defend its interests and clarify its position. Russia's deputy envoy to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, called the decision "illegal" and "politically motivated."
The US pushed for the move earlier this week after Russian forces withdrew from the Ukrainian city of Bucha and images of dozens of dead civilians circulated in the Western press. The US claimed Russian troops executed them, but Moscow pointed out a several-day gap between the Russian pullout and the discovery of the bodies, during which time Ukrainian police made sweeps through the area to remove pro-Russian citizens. Moscow has denied all accusations of targeting civilians.
In turn, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov called attention to the hypocrisy in US media due to its refusal to give equal coverage to video evidence of Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian prisoners of war, which is a war crime and the footage of which the New York Times has verified the authenticity. Human Rights Watch has also launched a probe of the reports.
Russia launched the special operation in Ukraine on February 24 after months of attempts at negotiating a solution to Russian security red lines with NATO had failed and Ukrainian forces attacked the independent People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which then appealed to Moscow for help. The Russian Defense Ministry has said the operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only, while Ukrainian forces have been using civilians as shields and positioning weapons systems in civilian areas.
In response to the operation, the US and its allies have sought to isolate Russia on the global stage politically and economically, implementing wide-reaching sanctions against the Russian economy and seeking to oust it from long-standing positions, such as the UN Human Rights Council and its permanent veto power in the UN Security Council.