U.N. Security Council members confronted Russia on Tuesday over a missile strike the previous day that destroyed part of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, pouring out condemnations at an emergency meeting chaired by Moscow’s own ambassador.
Russia denies responsibility for the strike at the hospital, where at least two staffers were killed.
France and Ecuador asked for the session at the Security Council, but Russia led it as the current holder of the council’s rotating presidency, putting Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia on the receiving end of the criticism.
“Mr. President, please stop this war. It has been going on for too long,” Slovenian Ambassador Samuel Zbogar appealed.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told colleagues that they were there “because Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, current rotational president of the Security Council, attacked a children’s hospital.”
“Even uttering that phrase sends a chill down my spine,” she added.
Nebenzia characterized the slew of criticism as “verbal gymnastics” from countries trying to protect Ukraine’s government. He reiterated Moscow’s denials of responsibility for the hospital attack, insisting it was hit by a Ukrainian air defense rocket.
Later, he heard people crying out for help from beneath the rubble. Most of the over 600 young patients had been moved to bomb shelters, except those in surgery, Zhovnir said. He said over 300 people were injured, including eight children, and two adults died, one of them a young doctor.
Acting U.N. humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya stressed to the Security Council that intentionally attacking a hospital is a war crime. She called Monday’s strikes “part of a deeply concerning pattern of systematic attacks harming health care and other civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.”
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.N. World Health Organization has verified 1,878 attacks affecting health care facilities, personnel, transport, supplies and patients, she said.
Even against that backdrop, several council members pronounced Monday’s strike shocking.
British Ambassador Barbara Woodward called it “cowardly depravity.” Ecuadorian envoy José De La Gasca described it as “particularly intolerable.” To Slovenia’s Zbogar, it was “another low in this war of aggression.”