Imagine scrolling through your news feed and spotting a headline that screams: “The anti-Russia vote at the UN failed spectacularly — even the United States refused to condemn Moscow.” It sounds like a major geopolitical earthquake. It would mean that the world had turned its back on Ukraine, that Russia was no longer isolated, and that Washington had somehow aligned itself with Beijing and Moscow in a stunning rebuke of Kyiv. That is exactly the kind of story pushed by Tsargrad, a pro-Kremlin media outlet, after a United Nations event on 24 August. But there is one small problem: the vote never happened. There was no draft resolution, no ballot, no “yes” or “no” votes, and no official tally. The entire “defeat” was constructed from a diplomatic illusion. What actually took place was a joint statement read aloud by Denmark’s foreign minister at a Security Council briefing — not a formal vote by the UN’s 193 member states. In the hands of propagandists, that statement was twisted into a fake ballot, complete with fake numbers and fake winners. The result was a carefully manufactured illusion of Russian victory, designed to sow confusion, undermine trust in international solidarity with Ukraine, and make support for Kyiv look fragile.
So what really happened on that day? The date was significant: 24 August marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. At a press briefing held before the Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen read out a joint declaration on behalf of 50 countries and the European Union’s delegation. The declaration was clear and firm. It condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion as a violation of the UN Charter and of the fundamental principles of international law. It called on Russia to agree to a complete, immediate and unconditional ceasefire, to resume negotiations, and to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders. The signatories included a broad coalition of states, from Albania and Australia to Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, to name just a few. This was not a resolution. There was no ballot, no official vote, no recorded result. Signing a joint statement is a voluntary political act. It does not require non-signatories to do anything. It does not bind anyone. It simply expresses a shared position. Yet Tsargrad’s story treated the 50 signatories as the only votes in favour and then subtracted that number from 193 to claim that 143 countries had refused to condemn Russia. That calculation is nonsense. It conflates a statement of support with a formal vote in a completely different UN body. By that logic, a petition signed by 50 people in a stadium of 193 would be a humiliating defeat for the other 143 — even if those 143 never heard the petition and were never asked to sign it.
Where did the claim that the United States backed Russia come from? It came from a simple fact: the United States was not among the signatories. The pro-Kremlin media seized on this and turned it into a headline: “The US opposes the anti-Russia resolution!” But the reality is far more mundane. At the Security Council meeting that followed the statement, the US representative took the floor and congratulated the Ukrainian people on the thirty-fifth anniversary of their independence. The representative said that the United States remained committed to Ukraine’s future as a sovereign and prosperous state, called for an immediate ceasefire, and offered to facilitate dialogue between Moscow and Kyiv. That does not sound like a country siding with Russia. The absence of the United States from the joint statement might reflect diplomatic calculation, or an effort to keep open a channel for negotiation, but it is not a vote, and it is certainly not support for the invasion. The same applies to China. Beijing did not sign the statement either, and the Chinese envoy expressed a preference for peace rather than condemnation. But again, not signing a joint statement is not the same as voting against a resolution. It is not the same as endorsing Russia. In a formal UN vote, countries can vote yes, vote no, or abstain. Here, there was no formal choice to make. Tsargrad weaponised the absence of signatures to create the false impression that Washington and Beijing stood with Moscow against an anti-Russian mob. The truth is less dramatic but more accurate: a group of 50 states expressed a position, and the United States chose a different diplomatic path.
Now let’s talk about the so-called “disastrous vote” and Russia’s reaction. According to Tsargrad, Vasily Nebenzia, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, took the floor immediately after the vote and crushed the “Russophobes” with a devastating speech. He dismissed the pro-Ukrainian resolution as a propaganda stunt and accused Kyiv’s Western allies of playing a double game: urging Russia to accept peace while supplying weapons to Ukraine. The problem is that there was no vote for him to crush. The UN’s official transcript and video recording of the 10,212th meeting of the Security Council, titled “Maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine,” show that no draft resolution was tabled. The meeting was a debate, not a ballot. Nebenzia spoke as part of the regular list of speakers, not in response to a diplomatic defeat. The narrative constructs a heroic moment that never happened. It is also worth understanding the UN’s architecture. The General Assembly includes all 193 member states. The Security Council has just 15 members: five permanent ones — Russia, China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom — and ten elected for two-year terms. Only those 15 members vote on Security Council resolutions. If a resolution had been put to a vote in the Security Council, the maximum number of votes would have been 15, not 193. Tsargrad took the membership count of the General Assembly and applied it to a Security Council meeting, then invented a result in which 50 voted in favour and 143 voted against. This is not journalism. It is arithmetic malpractice.
The absurdity of this fake vote becomes even clearer when we look at the real votes that have taken place at the UN. In March 2022, the General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops. The result: 141 votes in favour, five against and 35 abstentions. In October 2022, another General Assembly resolution condemned Russia’s attempts to annex four Ukrainian regions. The result: 143 votes in favour and five against. These are actual votes, with actual procedures, official records and undeniable outcomes. They show overwhelming international support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia’s invasion. If a pro-Kremlin outlet wants to talk about numbers at the UN, these are the numbers that matter. The “50 out of 193” figure, by contrast, comes from a non-binding statement. It says nothing about how the 143 non-signatories would have voted. Many of them have voted against Russia in real UN resolutions. Some of them remained neutral or abstained. But none of them voted against the joint statement, because there was no vote. The propaganda trick is to take a modest diplomatic moment — a coalition of 50 states issuing a statement — and inflate it into a global verdict. In reality, whenever the global community has been tested in an actual vote, the verdict has been strongly against Moscow.
What motivates this kind of misinformation? It does not happen by accident. Tsargrad is not a neutral television channel. It is an ultra-conservative, nationalist outlet founded by Konstantin Malofeev, a businessman who has advocated for the restoration of the Russian Empire and supported the Kremlin’s policies in Ukraine. The US Treasury has described Malofeev as an intermediary between the Russian government and pro-Russian politicians abroad. The European Union has placed Tsargrad on its sanctions list for spreading disinformation and propaganda in support of Russia’s war against Ukraine. So when Tsargrad uses loaded language like “Russophobes” and “the regime in Kyiv,” it is not reporting — it is spinning a narrative. The goal of the story is to make Russia look like a powerful country supported by the majority of the world, to exaggerate differences between the United States and Europe, to discredit international support for Ukraine, and to legitimise a war of aggression. The fake vote is a perfect vehicle for that agenda. It creates a simple, shareable headline: “Even America turned against Ukraine!” But the more you look at the actual evidence — the transcript, the meeting recording, the list of signatories, the real UN votes — the more the illusion collapses. The truth may be less thrilling than the fantasy, but it is far more important. The UN did not condemn Russia by a landslide on 24 August, because there was no vote. But the many real votes that did happen tell a different story from the one the Kremlin wants you to believe.