Even holding a minute of silence for victims of the war in Ukraine proved difficult for the United Nations Security Council, where a meeting meant to push for peace a year after Russia invaded descended into objections about the order of speakers.
"You are turning the council into your own instrument,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said of the U.S. and its allies moments into the meeting Friday. Nebenzya objected to a decision to let Ukraine’s foreign minister deliver a speech before the 15 members of the Security Council did so.
It was an inauspicious start to a meeting that was intended to take stock one year after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his forces over the border, and to press for new avenues toward peace. Instead, the squabbling underscored how the world’s most powerful diplomatic body has been unable to fulfill its mandate of maintaining global peace and security as Russia, one of its five veto-wielding permanent members, wages war on its neighbor.