Zelensky calls Russia heading up UN Security Council ‘absurd’

Russia leading the United Nations Security Council while Vladimir Putin stands accused of war crimes in Ukraine is “absurd” and speaks to the “total bankruptcy” of the global body, Ukraine ​President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Unfortunately, we … have some obviously absurd and destructive news,” Zelensky said in his daily video address​ late Saturday, noting that Russian shelling had killed a 5-month-old boy the day before.

“And at the same time Russia is chairing the U.N. Security Council. It’s hard to imagine anything that proves more the total bankruptcy of such institutions,” he said.

Russia — ​a permanent member of the 15-member Security Council along with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China — assumed the group’s presidency Saturday, infuriating Ukraine.

Leadership of the council rotates alphabetically, and the last time Russia was in charge was in February 2022 — when it launched the invasion into Ukraine. 

The International Criminal Court last month issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest, accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine, including an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia. 

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes,” The Hague, Netherlands-based court said.

Regarding the child abductions, Putin allegedly “committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts.”

​Russia’s assuming the presidency of the Security Council also comes just days after ​Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was detained in Russia on espionage charges. 

Russia’s FSB security service nabbed Gershkovich last Thursday in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, accusing him of gathering information about an unspecified military factory. 

​With Post wires​