Ukraine Ambassador Andrii Melynk addresses the UN Security Council, June 22, 2026
UPDATE 1748 GMT:
At least three civilians have been murdered and 25 injured by a Russian ballistic missile strike on an infrastructure facility in Kryvyi Rih in southeast Ukraine.
Russian forces used an Iskander-M ballistic missile equipped with cluster munitions, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s military administration.
The three victims were two men, aged 25 and 34, and a 54-year-old woman. A boy and an elderly woman are in critical condition, and four people are seriously wounded.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky posted:
Every such day and every Russian strike prove that the pressure on the aggressor over this war is insufficient. It is important that the world not remain silent about the fact that Russia has still taken no real step toward ending this war.”
UPDATE 1735 GMT:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is skipping a high-level conference in Poland on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine.
Zelensky is sending Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko to head the Ukraine delegation for the annual conference, which will be held in the coastal city of Gdansk.
Tensions between Ukraine and Poland have risen over Zelensky’s naming of a military unit after the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The Army is accused of complicity with Nazi Germany and involvement in the killing of tens of thousands of Poles.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki has suggested that Zelensky could be stripped of Poland’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the White Eagle, conferred on the Ukrainian President in 2023.
UPDATE 1037 GMT:
Shifting the Kremlin’s position, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Russia is ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine to end Moscow’s 52-month full-scale invasion.
“We are ready to talk with Kyiv, as we have always been,” Lavrov told reporters.
After the suspension of Ukraine-Russia-US talks since February because of the Trump camp’s War on Iran, the Kremlin had pulled back from any discussions over a ceasefire on current frontlines.
Lavrov signalled that Moscow is maintaining its demand for Ukraine’s surrender of the rest of the Donetsk region in the east of the country.
In another shift, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said the Kremlin is now ready for dialogue with the European Union.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: The Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN, Andrii Melnyk, has warned Russia, “Get out of Ukraine as quickly as possible, before it is too late.”
Melnyk said in the Security Council, “Addressing the Russian representative, I can give you one piece of advice: you will never be able to hold the occupied lands. Never.”
Ukraine requested the Council session after waves of Russian attacks on civilian areas and cultural landmarks.
Reflecting an increasing confidence in Ukraine’s counter-attacks inside Russia and occupied territory, Melnyk said Kyiv may “recalibrate and modify” its current ceasefire offer if the UN continues a “wait-and-see approach”.
“Ukraine stands ready to engage in direct negotiations with Russia to secure a just and lasting peace in accordance with the UN Charter, but our patience is not endless,” he told the Council.
He noted that Ukraine has damaged 40% of Russia’s oil refineries, limiting Moscow’s exports and setting off gasoline rationing across the country and Russian-occupied areas.
Russia’s “Relentless Barbarism”
Commenting on Russia’s airstrikes, the Ambassador chided, “Every time we think that Russia has reached the very bottom of its brutality and can sink no lower in its cruelty, Mr. Putin shocks the world again and again.”
He spoke of the heavy damage to the 11th-century Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, including the Assumption Cathedral, in Kyiv last week.
Ukraine War, Day 1,573: Russia Murders 5+, Injures 35, Damages Historic Sites in Kyiv
“Russia has once again crossed yet another red line in its relentless barbarism,” he noted. “This reprehensible Russian strike against the [Assumption] Cathedral was not only a stab in the back of Ukrainians. It was a slap in the face of the entire civilized world.”
With the attack, Vladimir Putin had “secured his place among the darkest figures of modern history”:
His name will forever be associated not only with the destruction of cities and the killing of civilians, but also with the targeting of humanity’s cultural heritage.
These crimes will be remembered for generations, even long after this war has ended and justice has been served.
