Russia takes up the presidency of the U.N. Security Council today, a rotating role that it will hold for one month. Moscow most recently held the position in February 2022, the month it invaded Ukraine. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this week that “a country that flagrantly violates the U.N. Charter and invades its neighbor has “no place on the U.N. Security Council” but added that there is “no feasible international legal pathway” to change Moscow’s status in the organization.
Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Russia’s presidency “a stark reminder that something is wrong with the way international security architecture is functioning.”“A state that systemically ruins international peace and security will be presiding over the body tasked with maintaining them,” he said on Twitter.
Pressure is mounting on Moscow to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Russia on Thursday on espionage charges. The Journal denied the charges and said the “minimum” it expects of the Biden administration is to expel Russia’s ambassador and Russian journalists working in the United States. Biden called on Russia to release Gershkovichwhen speaking to reporters Friday but said expelling diplomats is “not the plan right now.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
The stuffed animals comforting Ukraine’s children in wartime: For children throughout Ukraine, plush animals, security blankets and other comfort items have served as lifelines amid the chaos of war, especially for those who escaped their homes taking only what they could carry, Siobhán O’Grady and Kamila Hrabchuk report.
These belongings are now being slowly collected by the War Childhood Museum, a project dedicated to documenting the experiences of children raised in war by cataloguing and displaying their most personal memories and possessions. When children offer a toy or book for the collection, Viktoriia Nesterenko, 30, a Kharkiv-based researcher for the museum, tells them: “‘Your pain is in this object and this object will be in a museum … Your pain is here. Not in you, but here.’”
