Ukraine: Briefing
On Monday afternoon (22 June), the Security Council will hold an open briefing on Ukraine. The meeting was requested by Ukraine in a 15 June letter and supported by the Council’s European members (Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, and the UK). The anticipated briefers are Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO) Mohamed Khaled Khiari and Director of the Crisis Response Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Edem Wosornu. Ukraine and several countries from the region are expected to participate in the meeting under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure.
In its letter, Ukraine describes what it calls another dramatic escalation by Russia, referring to the large-scale combined missile and drone attack carried out between the evening of 14 June into the morning of 15 June. According to the letter, Russia deployed 681 aerial attack assets, including 70 missiles and 611 uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), and that Kyiv was the primary target, with at least five people killed and dozens injured, including children. The letter also states that the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, was damaged and that the Dormition Cathedral within the complex sustained serious fire damage. The letter describes a “double-tap” strike in Kharkiv that killed five emergency responders while they were extinguishing fires caused by an earlier attack. Across Ukraine, at least 11 civilians were killed and dozens injured, according to the letter.
Monday’s meeting comes amid continued heavy Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and increasing Ukrainian long-range drone strikes against targets inside Russia. In the days after the Council’s most recent meeting on Ukraine, held on 8 June, Russian attacks continued to cause civilian casualties in several regions. The 14-15 June overnight attack was among the most significant recent assaults, heavily affecting Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro. At the same time, Ukraine has continued to strike deeper into Russian territory, including against energy infrastructure. For example, on 16 June, a Ukrainian drone attack reportedly caused a fire at Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow, one of the main fuel suppliers to the Moscow region. On 12 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine’s growing use of drones against Russia was intended to sow confusion, divide Russian society, and cause economic damage.
The diplomatic track has also seen several recent developments. On 7 June, the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK (also known as the “E3”) met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in London and issued a joint statement reiterating support for Ukraine and setting out five principles for a future settlement. They called on Putin to agree to an immediate and complete ceasefire and said that the current line of contact should serve as the starting point for negotiations, stressing that Ukraine’s sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances must be respected. The leaders also said that Ukraine should receive robust and legally binding security guarantees once a ceasefire enters into force, including through the deployment of the “Multinational Force–Ukraine”, a proposed international armed coalition, often referred to as a “Coalition of the Willing”. They further stressed that European security interests must be safeguarded in any agreement, with any elements relating to the European Union (EU) and NATO requiring the consent of EU member states and NATO allies. Russia, however, has accused the E3 countries of pursuing a “destructive” policy and has continued to object to what it views as European attempts to set conditions for any mediation effort.
Ukraine has also sought to sustain US engagement on the diplomatic track. On 8 June, Zelenskyy said that he had held a “positive conversation” with US Special Presidential Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, an adviser to US President Donald Trump and his son-in-law. The three discussed the prospects for diplomacy in connection with the Group of Seven (G7) summit, which was held between 15 and 17 June, and other events in June. (The G7 is comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, as well as the EU as a “non-enumerated member”.) On 16 June, Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, where the war in Ukraine was a central topic of discussion.
In a 17 June statement, the G7 leaders reaffirmed their support for Ukraine’s freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and expressed solidarity with Ukrainians affected by attacks on critical infrastructure and cultural heritage. They agreed to increase the delivery of air defence capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities, adding that they were ready to consider licensing arrangements to expand Ukraine’s domestic military production. They also committed to support Ukraine’s energy resilience ahead of winter and to increase pressure on Russia’s war economy, including through sanctions on the oil and gas sectors.
At Monday’s meeting, the briefers are likely to express concern about the continuing intensification of hostilities and their impact on civilians and civilian infrastructure. In this context, they may draw on the most recent protection of civilians in armed conflict (PoC) report by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), which was issued on 12 June. According to the report, conflict-related violence killed at least 274 civilians and injured 1,763 in May, marking the highest monthly civilian casualty toll since April 2022. The HRMMU said that the use of long-ranged weapons (namely missiles and drones) by Russia was the main driver of the high casualty figures, accounting for 45 percent of all civilian casualties, most of them in urban centres far from the front line.
Council members are expected to remain divided in their assessments of responsibility for the latest escalation and the prospects for diplomacy. The European Council members are likely to condemn Russia’s recent missile and drone attacks, describe them as part of a broader campaign against Ukraine’s civilian population and infrastructure, and call again for Moscow to accept a full, immediate, and unconditional ceasefire. Several of these members may refer to the damage to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and other cultural sites, as well as to the killing of emergency responders in Kharkiv. They may also welcome the G7 statement and stress the importance of maintaining pressure on Russia through sanctions and other measures.
Several other Council members are likely to focus on de-escalation, protection of civilians, and the need to avoid a wider regional confrontation. These members—including Bahrain, China, Pakistan, and Somalia—may reiterate calls for dialogue and diplomacy, urge the parties to agree to a cessation of hostilities, and warn against steps that could further widen the conflict.
Some members may also refer to the findings of the Secretary-General’s most recent annual report on children and armed conflict, dated 16 June, which documented 1,899 grave violations against 781 children in Ukraine in 2025. The report verified the killing or maiming of 753 children, most of them from explosive weapons with wide-area effects, and attributed 511 of these child casualties to Russian armed forces, 12 to Ukrainian armed forces, and 230 to unidentified perpetrators. It also attributed eight cases of sexual violence against four girls to Russian armed forces, and documented 641 attacks on schools and hospitals, 469 of which were attributed to Russian armed forces, seven to Ukrainian forces, and 165 to unidentified perpetrators. The Secretary-General said that he remained deeply alarmed by grave violations attributed to Russian armed forces, including increased killing and maiming from long-range attacks on populated areas far from the front line, while welcoming the decrease in grave violations attributed to Ukrainian armed forces. He also expressed concern about the impact on children of operations carried out by Ukrainian armed forces within Russian territory and called on all parties to “prioritize the protection of children in the planning and execution of military operations”.
Russia is likely to reject allegations that it targets civilians and argue that its strikes are directed at military facilities, defence-related production sites, and energy infrastructure used for military purposes. It may maintain that civilian casualties and damage to civilian sites are the result of Ukrainian air defence activity, as it did after the 14-15 June attack, when it denied striking the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and claimed that the site had been damaged by a US-made Patriot air defence missile. Russia may also accuse Ukraine and its European allies of ignoring civilian casualties in areas controlled by Russia or inside Russian territory. In this regard, Russia may reiterate its accusation that Ukraine had carried out a drone strike on a bus carrying Belarusian schoolchildren in Russia’s Bryansk region, killing a woman accompanying the children and injuring eight people, including six children. Ukraine’s military has denied the allegation.