STATEMENT

by H.E. Mr. Dr. Andrii Melnyk, LL.M.,

Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations

at the Security Council meeting on

“Maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine”

(19 May 2026)

 

 

Mr. President,

Distinguished Members of the Security Council,

I thank the Presidency of China for convening this meeting and express my gratitude to the delegations of Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, and the United Kingdom for supporting Ukraine’s request.

I’m also thankful to the distinguished briefers, Director Gotoh and Director Wosornu, for your detailed presentations confronting, once again, the Security Council with clear evidence of Russia’s crime of aggression, systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in and against Ukraine.

We commend the courageous work of the United Nations institutions on the ground, which continue to address the devastating consequences of Russia’s war of extension.

Mr. President,

Before turning to my statement, I cannot refrain from reacting to yet another display of crocodile tears by the representative of Russia, who once again seeks to squeeze sympathy and compassion out of this Chamber.

Stop complaining about the “suffering” of poor Russians.

What Russia is witnessing is the boomerang of war launched by Putin against Ukraine and now returning with the triple force striking with painful precision the very hand that set it in motion.

Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. And I cannot help but addressing you again in Russian.

«Хватит слёзы лить ручьём и устраивать этот плач Ярославны. Это вам не «Слово о полку Игореве». “Just stop crying a river and indulging itself in self-pity”.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine’s Forces never target civilians. We only destroy military assets in full compliance with international humanitarian law. And we reject all the fairy tales that we just heard.

Also, about some Ukrainian soldiers in Latvia. Just stop lying.

Mr. President,

The first half of May has become one of the deadliest periods for Ukrainian civilians since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s full-scale military invasion reaching a new level of barbarism.

The Russian armed forces have continued to deliberately and systematically attack the civilian population of Ukraine.

Between 4 and 11 May alone, Russia launched over 600 attack drones and 16 ballistic missiles against Ukrainian cities and communities. More than 40 civilians were killed, and over 200 were injured.

On 5 May, Russia struck multiple regions simultaneously. In Zaporizhzhia, Russian troops carried out a combined bomb and drone strike on a residential district, killing 12 people and injuring 46.

In Kramatorsk, bombs were dropped on the city center, killing 6 civilians and injuring 13.

In Dnipro, a strike on an industrial facility killed 4 people and injured 16.

In the Poltava region, missile and drone strikes on a gas extraction facility killed 5 people, including two rescue workers who were deliberately targeted in a second Russian strike while responding to the fire. At least 37 people were injured in this region.

In Chernihiv, a drone struck the regional prosecutor’s office, injuring 17 civilians.

These outrageous Russian terror attacks occurred just hours after the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced a ceasefire to take effect during the night of 5-6 May and called on Putin to take genuine steps toward ending its war of aggression.

Ignoring this appeal, the Russian armed forces continued their perfidious assaults against civilian infrastructure, including a strike on a kindergarten in Sumy on 6 May, where two people were killed and seven civilians were seriously injured.

The three-day ceasefire was ultimately agreed for 9-11 May following a statement by the US President Donald Trump. Ukraine honoured it fully and was ready for its continuation – as the ending of killings remains our sincerest will. But Russian forces continued assaults and drone strikes along the frontline even during this period. These three days were used by Moscow to accumulate more missiles and longe-range attack drones, which were unleashed against Ukrainian cities just after that.

The scale of Russia`s terror continues to increase. Last week, Russia launched more than 3 170 attack drones, over 1 300 guided bombs and 74 missiles against Ukrainian civilians. During the week at least 52 civilians were killed and 346 civilians were injured across Ukraine.

The 14 May was one of the deadliest days. Russian troops used more than one and a half thousand drones and 56 missiles. Strikes were recorded in most regions of Ukraine, from Zakarpattia to the Kharkiv region, including Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Volyn, Odesa, Poltava, and Sumy. Dozens of people were killed and wounded.

Kyiv suffered the most. A nine-storey residential apartment building was completely destroyed. A Russian high-precision cruise missile, the X-101, equipped with a 400 kg high-explosive cluster warhead, turned their home into a pile of rubble, which became a collective grave. As a result of this heinous attack, 24 civilians were killed in their sleep, including three children. Liubava Yakovlieva, a 12 year-old girl, and her elder sister, Vira, aged 17, as well as 15 year-old Maria. They were murdered that fateful night. The sisters were buried just this morning. More than  50 people were wounded as a result of that Russian strike.

Mr. President,

Regrettably, all these barbaric crimes committed by Russia against Ukrainian civilians every single day have still not met with an adequate response from the international community.

The staggering numbers of innocent victims – the kind that should make one’s hair stand on end – fail to provoke not only a commensurate action, but even a meaningful emotional reaction in this Council.

And therein lies one of the most cynical aspects of Putin’s strategy: to desensitize the war, to reduce even the most horrific crimes against humanity to nothing more than a routine wartime statistic.

Investigations have shown that the missile which hit a residential building in Kyiv, was produced just a few months ago using a substantial number of foreign-made components, including parts imported by Russia from Western Europe and North America.

The very fact that Putin is still able to manufacture such lethal weapons with the supply from abroad is nothing short of a scandal.

We therefore call upon all UN member states to enhance the sanctions regime and to prevent the delivery of components to Russia’s missile programme and to Russia’s war machine.

Distinguished members of the Council,

I must also draw your attention to a deeply alarming development.

The humanitarian situation and  the catastrophe unfolding in the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region – especially in Oleshky, Hola Prystan, Stara Zburivka, and Nova Zburivka – urgently demands the Council's attention.

Russian forces are deliberately blocking the departure of civilians and obstructing the supply of basic goods, food, water and medicine. Critical infrastructure has been completely destroyed. There is no electricity nor gas supply. These communities are on the brink of collapse. Civilians attempting to purchase food or leave by private vehicle are literally hunted by Russian drone strikes.

More than 6,000 people require urgent humanitarian assistance, including approximately 200 children. The majority are persons with limited mobility.

We call on UN member states to force Russia to comply with international humanitarian law, to allow evacuation corridors for those Ukrainians who wish to leave.

Mr. President,

We praise the efforts of the UN mission in Ukraine aimed at alleviating the suffering of civilians, especially along the front lines.

5 days ago, as we just heard, Russian forces struck a humanitarian convoy of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kherson region using 2 FPV drones. Russia deliberately tries to kill those delivering medicine, food, and essential supplies to the civilian population in the Kherson region.

In doing so, Russia is openly spitting in the face of our UN family.

These Russian war crimes against the UN cannot be tolerated.

This attack was not an isolated case, as we also just heard in this Council. Just a week ago Russia attacked a World Food Programme cargo shipment in Dnipropetrovsk region.

Thus we call on all Member States – particularly the signatories of the Declaration on the Safety of Humanitarian Personnel – to condemn these perfidious Russia’s attacks and intensify international pressure on Moscow to stop these crimes.

Mr. President,

Ukraine reiterates its commitment to the restoration of the comprehensive, just and lasting peace founded on the principles of the UN Charter. This requires full accountability for all those responsible for international crimes.

We therefore welcome the decision of the Council of Europe 4 days ago establishing the Steering Committee of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.

Thirty-six states, together with the European Union, have become parties to this agreement.

Judges will be appointed, prosecutors selected, and the structures of the Tribunal will be put in place in The Hague.

Thus, the accountability for Russia’s leadership is unavoidable, it is only a matter of time.

Dear Colleagues,

We once again call upon the Members of the Security Council to table - without further delay - a resolution on immediate and unconditional ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners of war on an “all-for-all” basis as well as the return of all unlawfully deported Ukrainian children and illegally detained Ukrainian civilians.

Once again we appeal upon all UN member states to tighten and fully enforce sanctions against the Russian Federation, especially targeting its military industry, energy revenues, and access to critical technologies.

We call again on not just on our allies but all member states to accelerate and expand military assistance to Ukraine, enabling us to protect civilians, defend our cities, and compel Mr. Putin to stop his barbarian war of aggression.

We encourage all UN member states to support accountability mechanisms, including the Special Tribunal and ongoing investigations of Russian war crimes.

Mr. President,

Despite Mr. Putin's boasts about alleged successes of his troops, even Russian pro-war military bloggers are criticizing disasters on the battlefield.

Many of them openly acknowledge that the current momentum favours Ukraine.

Moreover, some Russian military experts warn that Mr. Putin is losing the war.

With the frontline stalled, an estimated almost 1.4 million Russian troops dead or wounded, and ordinary Russians under increasing economic pressure, the war that Putin believed would produce his crowning life achievement will prove to be his final downfall.

For Russians, the war was for a long time something that happened far away. Now, they feel it – the consequences of the criminal decisions of their leaders. Ukraine’s drones and missiles routinely hit legitimate military targets deep inside the aggressor’s territory – often more than 1000 kilometers from our border.

In recent months, Ukraine’s legitimate drone strikes have taken roughly 20% of Russia’s refining capacity offline, while disrupting export and logistics flows by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. The result is a steady loss of billions of dollars in potential monthly revenue to continue killing Ukrainians.

Ukraine has been pursuing a strategic neutralization of war assets in Russia embracing long-range, asymmetric warfare to degrade Russia’s crumbling economy and to rupture its military manufacturing and further deflate civilian morale.

This spring, our strategy is not just bearing fruit, it is completely shifting the battlefield calculus. It is gradually becoming a game changer. We are reaching a turning point in Russia’s war.

As I elaborated in my last statements before this Council, the war has severely battered Russia’s economy. The army and military industry’s huge appetite for manpower has created an acute labour shortage. That has drastically slowed economic growth, squeezed small businesses already reeling from tax increases and raised inflation as companies compete for workers.

According to official figures, two-thirds of Russian small businesses didn’t turn a profit in the first quarter of this year. Economic growth fell sharply. 2026 is already off to a bad start: GDP shrank by 0.3% year-on-year during the first quarter.

If things in the rear don’t look good, the same goes for the front. The Russian army’s advances this year have been minimal, in part because Ukrainian drone warfare has transformed the battlefield.

For about 2 years, Russian commanders have tried to use mass armored and mechanized units capable of punching through the 1500 km frontline and seizing territory. But they failed because Ukraine’s drones quickly spot concentrations of men and material and precisely strike it.

Russia switched to sending small groups of soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian lines and establish footholds for follow-on forces. But because drones strike infiltrating infantry so effectively, this adaptation is not producing any advances.

The momentum of Russian advances has slowed tremendously this year. In April, Ukraine could liberate more territories than the Russian troops were able to occupy.

Few places illustrate strategic failure of Russia’s war as vividly as Mala Tokmachka, a village in Zaporizhzhia region, so tiny it once barely appeared on maps, yet so resilient it has defied years of triumphant Russian predictions.

Repeatedly declared “on the verge of capture” by pro-Kremlin commentators for years, it still remains unconquered, exposing the gap between propaganda and reality.

Mala Tokmachka symbolizes not merely a tactical impasse but the broader unraveling of Russia’s false narrative of inevitable victory.

With a touch of irony, one could know that Russia’s never ending attempts to seize Mala Tokmachka, now stretching beyond 1500 days, have lasted longer than some of history’s most legendary sieges, from Ancient Carthage to Rome, proving that even imperial ambitions can become hopelessly stuck before a village no one had ever heard of before the war.

Mr. President.

Just a few days ago, the world witnessed what has become a turning point in Russia`s war.

No, it was not a breakthrough on the battlefield. It was the painfully theatrical victory parade that was staged by Mr. Putin on the 9th of May, a Potemkin spectacle.

Conceived as a demonstration of imperial strength, instead it looked like the Russian empire rehearsing its own obituary.

Ukraine’s new capabilities of deep drone strikes forced Mr. Putin to pare back his military parade.

He has to beg US President Donald Trump to arrange a ceasefire with Ukraine so that this pitiful parade or, better to say, mascarade could proceed.

This episode was perhaps the greatest self-humiliation in modern Russia’s history.

Although, this spectacle did take place, but stripped of grandeur and heavy with desperation.

The illusion of Russia’s invincibility has ultimately cracked.

What was intended as a celebration of Russian “superpower” marked the beginning of the end for Moscow’s imperial ambitions and the imminent collapse of Putin’s rule teetering on its military, economic and moral bankruptcy.

As one commentator aptly put it, this parade proved to be a requiem for Putin’s military ambitions. He is really getting nervous and seeks to mask his humiliating failure with loud rhetoric and further terror against Ukraine’s civilian population.

Just one day after his theatrical parade, Putin once again returned to his old favorite trick, the nuclear blackmail.

He announced the testing of the intercontinental “Sarmat” missile, capable of carrying up to 16 nuclear warheads.

We all know this pattern. Whenever the Russian regime fails to achieve victories on the front lines, it immediately turns to apocalyptic threats and nuclear saber-rattling.

Moreover, there is another matter of grave concern. Putin just initiated Russia-Belarus nuclear exercises. The deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, coupled with joint nuclear drills, represents an unprecedented challenge to the global security architecture.

These actions directly violate Articles I and II of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits both the transfer and the receipt of control over weapons of mass destruction.

By turning Belarus into a nuclear staging ground, Putin is legitimizing nuclear proliferation, setting an extremely dangerous precedent for authoritarian regimes worldwide, and further entrenching Minsk as an accomplice in Russia’s nuclear blackmail.

Such a deliberate crossing of all NPT red lines cannot go unanswered. That is precisely why today we call upon all nuclear-weapon states - the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and China - not to ignore or tolerate these threats as mere rhetoric.

Russia’s trampling of its international obligations must not just be condemned.

We need a new sanctions regime against Russia’s nuclear arsenals.

Mr. President,

Despite the fact that Russia cannot win this war, we continue to hear the same shameless demands of Mr. Putin that Ukraine must capitulate. He continues to insist on Ukraine’s surrender.

But our reply to Russia is very simple.

«Шиш Вам с маслом». “Don’t hold your breath”.

«И прощай, немытая Россия, cтрана рабов, страна господ». “Farewell unwashed Russia, the land of masters and slaves”.

I thank you.

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Photo credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías