UN General Assembly adopts resolution on Chornobyl: US and Russia vote against
The UN General Assembly has adopted a Ukraine-initiated resolution on strengthening international cooperation and minimising the aftermath of the 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The document has been supported by 97 countries. The United States has joined Russia and Belarus in voting against it.
Source: Ukrinform
Details: The resolution, entitled Strengthening of international cooperation and coordination of efforts to study, mitigate and minimise the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster, was supported by the majority of delegations present in the chamber.
In addition to Russia and the US, the document was opposed by Belarus, China, North Korea, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger. A further 39 countries abstained.
The adopted resolution officially recognises the ongoing serious consequences of the disaster and emphasises the need to support affected hromadas. The document expresses "serious concern" over the damage to the new confinement structure above the destroyed Chornobyl reactor on 14 February 2025 following a Russian drone attack which jeopardised decades of international efforts to secure the site. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.]
The resolution also formalises the change in the English transliteration of Chornobyl: UN documents will now use the Ukrainian spelling Chornobyl instead of the Soviet-era and Russian Chernobyl. This applies to the official name of the International Chornobyl Disaster Remembrance Day, observed on 26 April.
The General Assembly has decided to hold a special session on 24 April 2026 to mark the 40th anniversary of the tragedy and called on the international community to assist Ukraine in repairing the damaged infrastructure of the nuclear power plant.
The position of the United States attracted particular attention. A US delegation representative explained that the vote against the resolution was not a refusal to support Ukraine's nuclear security, but rather reflected ideological differences with the UN phrasing.
Quote: "The United States voted against this text because of references to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related language. The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals advance a programme of soft global governance inconsistent with national sovereignty and adverse to US interests."
However, the American diplomat emphasised that Washington continues to support international nuclear safety standards and efforts to prevent incidents at Ukrainian nuclear facilities during the war.
Andrii Melnyk, Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the UN, presenting the draft, sharply criticised Belarus's attempts to promote an alternative document. He reminded the Assembly that Minsk has lost the moral right to such initiatives after enabling its territory to be used for the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which led to the capture of the Chornobyl plant by Russian forces.
"The action of a state in allowing its territory which it has placed at the disposal of another state to be used by that other state for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third state qualifies as an act of aggression," he said.
Melnyk also stressed the historical justice of changing the transliteration of the plant's name. He believes that the use of Chernobyl comes from the Russian transliteration of the name during the Soviet era and its continued use represents the continuation of an imperial legacy.
Background: Russian forces captured the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on the first day of the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, using it as a bridgehead for the advance on Kyiv. The occupation lasted 36 days, during which the Russians violated safety protocols and held staff hostage.
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