It is known that 13 members of the Security Council voted in favour of extending the sanctions against the Central African Republic for another year. Russia and China decided to abstain from voting.
The Russian Federation abstained in the voting on the draft resolution prepared by France on the extension of the sanctions regime against the Central African Republic. In the course of work on this document, we clearly indicated our position that the UN Security Council should finally respond to the repeated and absolutely justified requests of the government of the Central African Republic to lift the arms embargo < … >. We regret that our respective proposals for the draft document have not been adopted. Our amendments to the humanitarian elements of the text, based on the agreed language and of fundamental importance, were also ignored,” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s first deputy representative to the UN, said after the vote.
He also stressed that the ongoing arms embargo hampers the Central African Republic’s attempts to confront illegal armed groups, “while at the same time having no added value in terms of preventing the supply of weapons to militants.”
