US President Joe Biden has issued a statement to "applaud" the UN vote removing Russia from the United Nations Human Right Council (UNHCR).
"This is a meaningful step by the international community further demonstrating how Putin’s war has made Russia an international pariah," said Biden.
He said the US led the charge to remove Russia after discovering that it was "committing gross and systemic violations of human rights".
He added: "The images we are seeing out of Bucha and other areas of Ukraine as Russian troops withdraw are horrifying.
"The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed - in some cases having their bodies desecrated - are an outrage to our common humanity.
"Russia’s lies are no match for the undeniable evidence of what is happening in Ukraine."
The U.N. General Assembly voted earlier on Thursday to suspend Russia from the council over allegations of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield launched the campaign to suspend Russia after images surfaced of torture and brutal killings of civilians in Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said the Bucha killings were evidence of “genocide,” while Biden and other world leaders said they constituted “war crimes.”
The vote to oust Russia from the council was 93-24 with 58 abstentions, a significantly lower figure than the 140-plus members that supported resolutions last month to blame Russia for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, protect civilians and call for an immediate cease-fire. A two-thirds majority was necessary for the vote to be successful.
“It was historic,” Thomas-Greenfield said on MSNBC, minutes after the vote. “It was unprecedented that the General Assembly voted to suspend a permanent member of the Security Council from the Human Rights Council.”
On Wednesday, Russia warned countries that a “yes” vote would be viewed as an “unfriendly gesture” and threatened consequences. Prior to the vote Thursday, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the U.N., Gennady Kuzmin, cast blame on the United States as the aggressor.
“What we’re seeing today is an attempt by the United States to maintain its dominant position and total control,” he said. “We reject the untruthful allegations against us, based on staged events and widely circulated fakes.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., Sergiy Kyslytsya, disagreed, accusing Russia of both war crimes and crimes against humanity. “We have heard, many times, the same perverted logic of the aggressor trying to present itself as the victim,” he said.
Russia is only the second country to have its membership rights stripped at the rights council. The other, Libya, was suspended in 2011 by the assembly when upheaval in the North African country brought down longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The Geneva-based Human Rights Council is tasked with spotlighting and approving investigations of rights violations, and it does periodic reviews of the human rights situation in all 193 U.N. member nations.
It has created commissions of inquiry — which provide its highest level of scrutiny on alleged rights violations and abuses — for conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. It has also set up fact-finding missions in places like Libya, Myanmar and Venezuela.
