That means Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will chair the UN Security Council meeting in New York, when Russia takes over as the rotating president for April.

– Another important event during the Russian presidency was the open high-level debate on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the UN Charter”, said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

This is despite the fact that Russia is at war, and carried out its massive invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago.

– A bad joke

It did not go unnoticed. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described it as a “bad joke”.

– The world cannot be a safe place with Russia on the UN Security Council, Kuleba wrote on Twitter earlier this week, according to Television 2.

The last time Russia chaired the Security Council was last February – the same month Putin declared his military “special operations” in Ukraine.

Since then, thousands of people have died in the war.

Not seen since 2015

Two weeks ago, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, based on the illegal deportation of children and adolescents from Ukraine to Russian territory.

However, that is unlikely to have any significance, as Putin himself has not attended a Security Council meeting since 2015.

Ukraine’s representative to the UN, Serhij Kyslytsia, argued that it was “absurd at a new level” that Russia would now preside over the Security Council for the remainder of this month.

– The Security Council is unable to do what is their main task, which is to prevent and manage conflicts, he said in a statement, reproduced in Guard.