Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the UN Andrii Melnyk used a Security Council briefing Tuesday to condemn Russia’s intensifying strikes on civilians, and urge member states to choke off foreign components feeding Russia’s war machine.
Melnyk expressed gratitude to Denmark, Greece, France, Latvia and the UK for supporting Ukraine’s request to hold the urgent meeting. He also praised UN briefers for presenting evidence of “Russia’s crime of aggression, systematic war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
Before his main statement, Melnyk confronted the Russian delegation, accusing Moscow of playing the victim in a war it started.
“Stop complaining about the suffering of Russians,” Melnyk said. “What Russia is witnessing is the boomerang of war, launched by Putin against Ukraine, and now returning with triple force.”
He rejected claims that Ukraine targets civilians or uses Baltic states to launch drone operations, dismissing Moscow’s allegations about Ukrainian soldiers in Latvia as “fairy tales.”
“Just stop lying,” Melnyk said. “Unlike Russia, Ukraine’s forces never target civilians. We only destroy military assets in full compliance with international humanitarian law.”
‘One of the deadliest periods’ for civilians
Melnyk warned that the first half of May had become “one of the deadliest periods” for Ukrainian civilians since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Between May 4 and 11, he said, Russia launched more than 600 attack drones and 16 ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities and communities, killing more than 40 civilians and injuring over 200.
The Ukrainian diplomat detailed a coordinated multi-region assault on May 5. In Zaporizhzhia, he said, a combined bomb and drone strike on a residential district killed 12 people and injured 46. In Kramatorsk, bombs dropped on the city center killed six civilians and injured 13. In Dnipro, an attack on an industrial facility left four dead and 16 injured.
In the Poltava region, missiles and drones struck a gas extraction facility, killing five people, including two rescue workers who Melnyk said were deliberately targeted in a follow-up “double-tap” strike while responding to the initial blast.
He said the attacks occurred just hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a proposed ceasefire for the night of May 5-6 and called on Putin to take genuine steps toward ending the war.
Moscow ignored the appeal, the Ukrainian envoy said, and continued striking civilian infrastructure, including a kindergarten in Sumy on May 6, where two people were killed and seven civilians were seriously injured.
Kyiv apartment strike
Melnyk said Ukraine fully honored the three-day ceasefire agreed for May 9-11 and was ready to extend it, but accused Moscow of using the pause to stockpile weapons.
“The scale of Russia’s terror continues to increase,” he said.
According to Melnyk, Russia launched more than 3,170 attack drones, over 1,300 guided bombs and 74 missiles against civilians over the past week, killing at least 52 people and injuring 346.
The violence peaked on May 14, he said, when Russian forces deployed more than 1,500 drones and 56 missiles across much of Ukraine, from Zakarpattia to Kharkiv.
Kyiv suffered the worst blow when a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile destroyed a nine-story residential building.
“A Russian high-precision cruise missile, the Kh-101, equipped with a 400-kilogram high-explosive cluster warhead, turned it into a pile of rubble, which became a collective grave,” the Ukrainian diplomat told the Council.
The strike killed 24 civilians in their sleep, including three children: 12-year-old Lyubava Yakovleva, her 17-year-old sister Vira, and 14-year-old Maria. Melnyk said the two sisters were buried Tuesday morning. More than 50 others were wounded.
Call to Block Western Components
Melnyk accused Putin of trying to desensitize the international community to Russian atrocities.
“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,” he said.
He said investigations showed that the Kh-101 missile used in the Kyiv strike had been manufactured only months earlier and contained foreign-made components imported by Russia from Western Europe and North America.
“The very fact that Putin is still able to manufacture such lethal weapons with supplies from abroad is nothing short of a scandal,” Melnyk said.
He urged all UN member states to tighten sanctions and block the flow of technology to Russia’s missile programs.
‘Hunted’ by drones in Kherson
The Ukrainian Ambassador also warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region, including Oleshky, Hola Prystan, Staraya Zburivka and Nova Zburivka.
Russian forces, he said, are blocking civilian evacuations and preventing deliveries of food, water and medicine.
“These communities are on the brink of collapse,” Melnyk said.
Critical infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving more than 6,000 people – including about 200 children and many people with limited mobility – without electricity or gas, he said.
“Civilians attempting to purchase food or leave by private vehicle are literally hunted by Russian drone strikes,” Melnyk said, calling on UN member states to pressure Moscow to allow safe evacuation corridors.
He also condemned a recent Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone attack on a United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) convoy in Kherson region and a separate strike on a World Food Programme shipment in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
“Russia deliberately tries to kill those delivering medicine, food, and essential supplies,” Melnyk said. “In doing so, Russia is openly spitting in the face of our UN family.”
Special tribunal and sanctions
Reaffirming Kyiv’s commitment to peace based on the UN Charter, Melnyk said lasting peace also requires accountability.
He welcomed the Council of Europe’s decision to establish a steering committee for a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine, noting that 36 states and the European Union had joined the initiative to set up judicial structures in The Hague.
“The accountability of Russia’s leadership is unavoidable. It is just a matter of time,” Melnyk said.
He urged the Security Council to table a resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, an all-for-all prisoner exchange, and the return of all deported Ukrainian children and unlawfully detained civilians.
The Ukrainian envoy also appealed for expanded military assistance to help Ukraine defend its cities.
He said the “battlefield calculus” was shifting, with Ukraine’s long-range drones and missiles routinely striking legitimate military targets deep inside Russia.
The wider Security Council session also heard warnings from UN officials that the war in Ukraine is becoming “deadlier by the day,” while several member states condemned Russia’s attacks on civilians, humanitarian workers and critical infrastructure.