A U.S. government resolution on Ukraine that called for an immediate stop to the conflict but did not identify Russia as the aggressor was approved by the UN Security Council on Monday.
For the first time, the most influential UN body has decided on the war in unison.
The resolution received the necessary majority when ten nations voted in favor of it and five abstained.
All five of the Council’s European members. Great Britain, France, Slovenia, Denmark, and Greece abstained from voting, while the United States voted alongside China and Russia.

In theory, the British and French have the right to veto a resolution, although they haven’t exercised it since 1989.
UN Security Council resolutions are legally binding under international law.
The accepted declaration, titled “The Path to Peace,” did not characterize Moscow as the aggressor in the war and did not call for a Russian retreat, only for a quick end to the conflict.
The resolution, according to the US envoy, is not a peace pact.

The British UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, spoke out clearly against the resolution: “there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this Council refers to this war’’.
She said in a speech before the council that was also released as a statement.
The vote came on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Today, we remember the millions of Ukrainians displaced, the tens of thousands of civilians killed, the lives destroyed by Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambition,’’ Woodward said.
France’s UN ambassador, Nicolas de Rivière said peace and security was not possible if aggression is rewarded.

The resolution is the first step, according to U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea.
“With this resolution, we get closer to peace.
Although it is only the first step, it is an important one, and we should all be proud of it. We now need to use it to create a peaceful future for Russia, Ukraine, and the global community,” she stated.
The United States did not support the resolution that was voted by the UN General Assembly earlier on Monday, but European nations did.
It called for Russian soldiers to leave Ukrainian territory and named Moscow as the war’s aggressor.

A vote in the UN’s greatest body was regarded as a worldwide test of mood, even though resolutions passed by the General Assembly, unlike the Security Council, are not legally obligatory.