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”

(24 August 2026)

Mister President,

Distinguished Members of the Security Council,

I would like to express my gratitude to the Kingdom of Denmark, to the Danish Presidency of the Council, Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen for convening this meeting that is devoted to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on this, without exaggeration, sacred day for every Ukrainian.

It is today that we mark the 35th anniversary of the restoration of Ukraine’s independence.

At the same time, I would like to thank Denmark, as well as all our allies and partners, for their steadfast support that we the Ukrainian people have been receiving in our struggle to preserve Ukraine’s independence.

I convey my thankfulness to the delegations of France, Greece, Latvia, and the United Kingdom for supporting today’s meeting and special welcome to Vice-Minister of Latvia Dace Melbārde.

I am thankful to Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo and Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher for their sobering briefings which have revealed yet another level of Russia’s barbarism against the civilian population in Ukraine.

USG Fletcher just returned as we heard from Ukraine where he has experienced himself the brutality of Russia’s cynical attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians. I take my hat off to him for his courage.

Mr. President,

Before I turn to my statement, allow me to address one important point.

Today, we once again heard from the representative of Russia the familiar lamentations about Ukraine striking targets deep inside Russian territory.

Mr. Nebenzia is whining again about alleged civilian victims in Russia that cannot be independently verified. He is shedding again crocodile tears.

Perhaps I am repeating myself, but let me be absolutely unequivocal:

“Those who sow the wind will reap the storm.”

Moscow has unleashed this whirlwind and it cannot complain now about the tsunami that reaches Russia’s shores sweeping over and engulfing its fragile economy already weakened to the breaking point.

Our reply to all the baseless accusations is very simple: Ukraine is exercising its inherent right of individual self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter against Russia’s ongoing armed aggression.

The ICJ has made clear on many occasions that the legality of measures taken in self-defence is only governed by the requirements of necessity and proportionality.

The Court held that self-defence permits measures that are “proportional to the armed attack and necessary to respond to it.” It stated that “one aspect of these criteria is the nature of the target” of the force employed in self-defence.

This is directly relevant to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

The Charter does not require a victim of aggression to remain silent and passive while the aggressor’s military capabilities are sustained from facilities situated on the aggressor’s own territory.

The question under international law is not whether a respective facility – a factory or storage - is located on Russian territory. The question is what the particular facility is being used for and whether it constitutes a military objective.

Had the Allies confined their military operations to their own territories and refrained from striking the Third Reich on its own soil, it is difficult even to imagine how the Second World War could ever have been brought to an end.

Under Article 52(2) of Geneva Additional Protocol I, military objectives are limited to objects which, by their nature, location, purpose or use, make an effective contribution to military action and whose destruction, capture or neutralization offers a definite military advantage in the circumstances prevailing at the time.

Accordingly, a warehouse, logistics centre, industrial facility or distribution hub which is being used to supply the Russian armed forces with military equipment, protective gear, components, vehicles or other material indispensable to Russia’s war effort do constitute a military objective, depending on the facts established at the time of the attack.

Nor does the fact that such an object is located deep inside the Russian Federation make it immune from attack of Ukraine exercising its inherent right of self-defence.

And let me turn specifically to Russia’s oil infrastructure.

Oil refineries, fuel depots, petroleum terminals, pipelines and other energy facilities can be regarded as military objectives, because they are used to produce, refine, store or distribute fuel for Russia’s armed forces, which constitutes an effective contribution to Russia’s military action.

Therefore, if its destruction or neutralization offers a definite military advantage, that particular facility may qualify as a military objective under Article 52 paragraph 2 of the Additional Protocol I.

The same legal test applies to Russia’s dual-use infrastructure.

Ukraine’s position is absolutely clear:

Our armed forces only target military objectives that contribute to Russia’s war effort, never civilians.

And they do so in the exercise of our inherent right of self-defence, subject to necessity, proportionality, distinction and all the applicable rules of international humanitarian law. Ukraine takes all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm.

The only person responsible for any damages, for any casualties in Russia is Mr. Putin alone.

And this is where the fundamental difference between Ukraine and Russia lies.

Even in this very chamber, Russia continues to feed the distinguished members of the Council with lies about civilians in Ukraine allegedly being killed by the incompetence of Ukrainian air defences.

Yet the world has seen, in broad daylight, Russian drones deliberately striking civilian targets — as they did just few days ago in the city of Kryvyi Rih, that was, as USG Di Carlo mentioned, intentionally hitting the city’s largest supermarket, with no military objective anywhere nearby.

And when rescue operations began, Russia sent a second drone to strike the rescuers at the scene.

At least 16 civilians were killed and more than 130 injured, including 23 children. This is the deliberately genocidal barbaric nature of Russia’s war against the Ukrainian people.

Mr. President,

Ukraine marks this Independence Day with mixed emotions.

On the one hand, we feel an extraordinary sense of happiness, that, for 35 years now, Ukrainians have had the blessing of living in a free and sovereign state.

For us, this is truly a gift from God. But it is also the result of the struggle of generations of Ukrainians over the course of centuries, generations who dreamed of, fought for, and sacrificed for the fundamental right to live freely in their own and independent country.

For us Ukrainians, statehood and independence are not some abstract formalities. They are our greatest national value, the very foundation of our existence as a people.

On the other hand, Ukrainians are marking this anniversary against the backdrop of the most barbaric phase of Russia’s war of annihilation against our nation.

As we have just heard once again from the esteemed briefers, July 2026 was the deadliest and the bloodiest month for the civilian population in Ukraine since the first month of Russia’s full-scale invasion 4 and a half years ago.

Knowing that Ukraine is facing critical shortages of air-defense interceptors, Putin has unleashed the most cynical and the most brutal campaign of ballistic terror in modern human history deliberately targeting ordinary people across Ukraine.

Let me remind you that a ballistic missile is not an ordinary weapon. It rises high into the sky, leaving the earth behind, and then it begins to descent from the sky leaving the earth behind it hits the ground at several times the speed of sound.

In mere moments, it falls back toward the ground with terrifying force.

For those beneath its morderous trajectory, there is no time to react, almost no warning.

What arrives from the sky is more than a missile, it is a deadly mass of explosives descending with enormous kinetic energy.

Just imagine this deadly Russian ballistic missile, the Iskander-M for instance carrying a warhead of up to 700 kilograms, climbing to an altitude of around 50 kilometres, and then plunging back toward the ground at a speed of up to 9,000 kilometres per hour, literally falling on the heads of civilians in the very heart of Kyiv.

And believe me, I know what I am talking about.

I have just arrived from Kyiv.

During my stay, our capital was attacked almost every single night by dozens of such ballistic missiles.

And I can assure you, it is a truly terrifying feeling when you simply have no time to reach a bomb shelter. The time between the air-raid alert and the deadly impact of this ballistic missile on a residential building in historic city of Kyiv is measured in a few minutes.

And so, in those moments, all that remained for me and my family, my parents-in-law, was to hide in the corridor of our apartment praying that the missile would not hit our building.

It is, perhaps, the most atrocious form of Russian roulette imaginable, except that in Putin’s distorted version, the gun is a ballistic missile and the target is a peaceful city.

God spared us during those horrifying attacks. But many other Ukrainians were not so fortunate. On one of those nights, immediately after our arrival Russian missiles killed 17 civilians in Kyiv alone.

It is against this hellish reality that Ukrainians are marking the 35th anniversary of the restoration of our independence today.

Distinguished members of the Council,

All this resembles the most appalling and abhorrent theatre of the absurd imaginable in history: day and night, Ukraine, a great European nation, is being brutally destroyed before the eyes of the entire international community, by Russian ballistic missiles and killer drones.

And all that the world community seems capable of doing is to convene a meeting of the UN Security Council, and, at best, condemn Russia’s war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed on a staggering scale.

And some choose instead to hide behind abstract formulas, avoiding even mentioning Russia, the country that launched this war of extinction against Ukraine and continues to wage it with impunity.

What a disgrace that, to this day, the UN Security Council has failed to take effective action to hold Russia to account and to prevent a daily genocide of the Ukrainian people, carried out in plain sight of the world.

Of course, we, Ukrainians, value the fact that Russia’s barbaric war against our very statehood remains on the agenda of this Council.

At the same time, it is equally clear that words alone — even the strongest words of condemnation of Russia’s criminal actions uttered in this chamber — cannot stop the killing force of Russian ballistic missiles.

Only decisive action — not words, not even the strongest words — can stop this deadly Russian war machinery.

It is time for the Security Council to impose the most painful and far-reaching sanctions against Russia, against foremost those enterprises which produce deadly weapons, so that Mr. Putin is compelled to stop his war.

And it is time to put an end to Russia’s abuse of its veto power as a fig leaf — as an excuse for inaction — and to stop allowing the aggressor state to hide behind the very privilege it has misused to shield itself from accountability.

We understand that this Council has its own traditions and unwritten rules — a kind of pact of mutual non-aggression. But we can see that this is a road to nowhere.

Unless Russia is shown that no one will any longer tolerate its cynical course of prolonging — and even escalating — the war against Ukraine, while simultaneously shifting blame and spreading lies, these daily deaths of innocent people will weigh on the conscience of this Council.

This also concerns something as basic as human conduct.

Continuing business as usual, to shake hands with the Russians and behaving as though nothing is happening — discussing routine agenda items as if there were no genocidal war raging in the very heart of Europe — is sending an absolutely wrong message.

It creates the impression that Russia can continue its terror campaign against Ukraine’s independence without facing any consequences of its criminal actions.

It is an open secret that Ukraine needs most urgently today than ever to protect its civilian population from Russia’s ballistic missiles.

And, if we are to be completely frank, my fellow citizens find it difficult to understand why missiles capable of saving hundreds of lives every day are being kept in storages instead of being used to shield Ukrainian civilians.

Of course, we fully understand the challenges of production and the enormous global shortage of air-defence systems.

But nevertheless, I once again urge all our partners to take the only right decision today: to provide Ukraine with all the available Patriot interceptor missiles currently held in stockpiles.

At the same time, Ukraine is initiating a global coalition to massively scale up development and production of antiballistic  interceptors - by tenfold or more. This would not only help save Ukrainian lives today; it would also be a critical and preventive step to deter future missile attacks.

Mister President,

I wish to draw this Council’s attention to another war crime by Russia. It was just mentioned by a few colleagues. Since one month, exactly one month, Moscow has fully blocked navigation in the Black Sea, attacking all merchant vessels sailing to and from Ukrainian ports. One month. This has been a dramatic development, having consequences, as we heard from some colleagues, for the whole international community due to a steep rise of wheat prices and prices of other foods endangering global food security. Ukraine has made already concrete proposals to the Russian Federation to find a solution, like in 2022 with the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Unfortunately, Russia has discarded this offer.

 

Mr. President,

Continuing, irrespective of all the barbaric attacks against civilians in Ukraine, Russia is losing and will lose this war.

A few days ago the chief economist at Russia’s second-largest state bank - Vneshekonombank – Andrei Klepach has been fired upon direct instructions from the Kremlin after his critical comments about the real state of the economy, including warnings that Moscow cannot win a prolonged economic war against Ukraine.

Mr. Klepach said Russia was “falling behind” China and the US economically, and “in some respects, Ukraine”.

He predicted that pressures on Russia’s economy due to the war would inevitably lead to a “social crisis” that would erupt “when no one particularly expects it”.

Let me quote: „I am almost certain we’ll come to a social crisis…under the current macroeconomic policy being pursued, the economy will stop, and society is unlikely to accept it." End of quote.

Mr. Klepach also said expectations of an imminent Ukrainian economic collapse were misplaced and that a prolonged standoff with Ukraine would not lead to Russia’s victory. “We will not win this competition in a war of attrition with Ukraine. We have an illusion that everything will collapse there in Ukraine. It hasn’t collapsed, and it won’t. Our costs are growing.”

The comments they were a rare acknowledgment from a senior Russian economist of the country’s mounting economic struggles and directly contradicting Putin’s claims that Moscow was successfully weathering the economic pressures of the war and that Ukraine’s economic exhaustion was only a matter of time.

Russia’s economy is facing its most difficult period since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, strained by massive wartime spending, western sanctions and Ukraine’s growing ability to strike at Moscow’s oil and gas industry.

In the first months of this year alone, Russia’s budget deficit hit 5.8 tn roubles (about $81bn), well above the government’s 3.8 tn rouble target for the entire year.

Russian Finance Ministry itself reports that federal oil and gas revenues collapsed by almost 40 per cent year-on-year in January–April 2026.

There is considerable evidence that Mr. Klepach’s assessment of the Russian economic problems aligns with reality, undermining the validity of Mr. Putin’s theory of victory.

This theory assumes that Russian forces will be able to continue gradual, creeping advances indefinitely; prevent Ukraine from conducting successful operationally significant counteroffensive operations; and that Russia can prevail in a war of attrition by outlasting Ukrainian will and that of Ukraine’s external friends and supporters.

The truth is that Russia is not in the position to sustain its method of waging a protracted attritional war, as losses exceed recruitment rates and financial and material costs rise, and that the Kremlin is exaggerating its tactical advances to present the appearance of continuous military gains.

Mr. President,

Putin did not simply launch a war against Ukraine. He unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse like in the Book of Revelation.

Conquest. War. Famine. Death.

Those four horsemen that the world thought belonged to the pages of an ancient biblical prophecy.

Putin unleashed them upon Ukraine, but their shadow has spread far beyond its borders.

And those dismal horsemen obey no master. They are turning back and their hoofbeats are echoing back toward the Kremlin. They are coming home to Moscow.

They are going to swallow not only the one who unleashed them, but the very system that was built. And when their ride is over, they may leave the final seal upon the fate of Russia itself.”

Mr. President,

In this Council Mr. Nebenzia never missses an opportunity to evoke a cynical impression how much he cares about the mobilization in Ukraine.

Yet when credible reports emerged about a new unprecedented wave of mobilization in Russia which is running out of soldiers, the Russian representative found himself in a less comfortable position.

Just a few days ago, he was forced to reassure at a press conference here, that no mobilisation is being planned in Russia.

He said this with precisely the same expression on his face with which his boss, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and the Kremlin spokesman, Mr. Peskov, solemnly proclaimed — beat their chests and swearing to it — just days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that Putin had no intention of going to war.

So today, I would like to address the Russian people directly -  and not only Russian men, but also their mothers and wives in your native language and I am sorry that I have to switch now into Russian:

Должен предупредить всех россиян, поскольку от вашего руководства вы вряд ли это услышите. Сразу же после очередных фейковых выборов 20 сентября этого года, Путин начнет массовую насильную мобилизацию - до полмиллиона человек и он отправит всех в Украину, но это билет в один конец, потому что они поедут не на крымскую ривьеру, а для того, чтобы удобрить священную украинскую землю. Поэтому, пока еще не поздно, у вас остаются считанные дни и недели, чтобы спаковать вещи и уехать из России. Если вы, конечно, еще где-то найдете заправку с бензином. Одним словом, беги, Ваня, беги. Run, Forest, run.

Mr. President,

Let me bring my remarks to a close with a final message. As you all remember, exactly a year and a half ago, Ukraine declared its readiness for an immediate, comprehensive and unconditional ceasefire.

At each and every Security Council meeting since then, since one year and a half, we have called on all of you to finally adopt a corresponding resolution of this Council.

Ukraine remains committed to peace. Regrettably, Ukraine’s gesture of goodwill and our readiness to seek compromise in order to bring this barbarous war to an end have met with no meaningful response and fallen on deaf ears.

Putin himself continues to openly reject any possibility of such a ceasefire. Just this weekend he once again made a mockery of very concrete peace proposals of Ukraine that were transmitted to him dismissing them as exotic.

In doing so, Russia is again spitting in the face and showing contempt for each and every member of the Security Council.

The Council shall therefore no longer afford to ignore this blatant disregard for its athority. Russia must stop playing this cat-and-mouse game in this chamber.

Hence, today I call upon the members of the Council to table a resolution demanding that the Russian Federation finally comply with the binding Order of the International Court of Justice of March 16, 2022 and immediately suspend its military operations in and against the territory of Ukraine.

This resolution should also demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian forces from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.

Moreover, we urge this Council that the resolution establish a 50-kilometer demilitarized zone on the Russian side of the international border with Ukraine, as a necessary security measure to protect Ukraine’s civilian population from continued attacks launched from Russian territory.

If this Council is serious about ending Russia’s war of extinction against Ukraine, it should finally act on what the International Court of Justice ordered four and a half years ago.

Mr. President,

In conclusion, as has become a good tradition, I cannot but address a few final words to the representative of the Russian Federation.

But this time, I shall do so not in a language familiar to him, but in the words of Ivan Kotliarevsky, he was the founding father of modern Ukrainian literature, writing in 1798 in his seminal burlesque-travesty poem Aeneid:

“Геть, проч, вбирайтесь відсіль к чорту.”

In English, for the benefit of everyone in this Chamber:

“Begone! Be off with you — and away to hell!”

And I can only repeat:

Russians, get the hell out of Ukraine.

I thank you for your attention.