Russia-Ukraine war: General Assembly to hold urgent session at 8.30 pm today

United Nations, Feb 28: UNGA President Abdulla Shahid will preside over the 11th Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly, at the UN Headquarters in New York, at at 10am in the US, (8.30 pm IST) on Monday.

The U.N. Security Council has voted for the 193-member General Assembly to hold an emergency session on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The vote on Sunday to authorise an emergency meeting was 11 in favour, Russia opposed, and China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstaining. That was the exact same vote on a resolution Friday demanding that Moscow immediately stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw all troops. But in that case, Russia used its veto and the resolution was defeated.

Ukrainian U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya asked for the General Assembly meeting to be held under the so-called ''Uniting for Peace'' resolution, initiated by the United States and adopted in November 1950 to circumvent vetoes by the Soviet Union during the Korean War.

That resolution gives the General Assembly the power to call emergency meetings when the Security Council is unable to act because of the lack of unanimity among its five veto-wielding permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

with PTI inputs