Usually, this event is not given much importance, since the country-chairman does not have great powers: its representative convenes and conducts meetings, signs the adopted documents.

Nevertheless, the fact that Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, became the chairman of the Security Council, drew a lot of attention to this event.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmitriy Kuleba, called Russia's presidency of the UN Security Council a slap in the face of the international community and called on the members of the Council to prevent Russia's attempts to abuse the position of the chairman.

The US urged Russia to behave professionally in this position.

The White House said it expects Russia to continue to use its seat on the council to spread disinformation and justify its actions in Ukraine: "Unfortunately, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, and there is no real international legal mechanism to change that."

• The day before, the democratic leader Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya sent a letter to the UN Security Council in which she called to prevent the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus.