Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticized the US for vetoing draft UN Security Council resolutions calling for an end to hostilities between Israel and Hamas.

“It is clear that this approach is disastrous,” he told Belarusian state news agency BelTA on Saturday. He added that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved peacefully, although he acknowledged that the current situation, with the war that broke out since October 7, does not allow for the resumption of talks aimed at achieving a two-state solution.

The UN General Assembly approved yesterday Friday a resolution calling for an “immediate”, “lasting” and “fully respected” cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

Although the decisions of the General Assembly are not binding, they are considered to have symbolic weight. The decision was approved with 120 votes in favor, 14 against and 45 abstentions. Hamas praised her, Israel condemned her as a “disgrace”.

In the SA, whose decisions are binding on the 193 member states of the UN, no text has been approved.

Moscow has traditionally managed to maintain good relations with the Arab world, including the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, but also with Israel.

Russian diplomacy recently accuses the US of contributing to the explosion of violence in the Middle East and characterizes Washington’s policy in the region as a failure.

For Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, immediate declaration of a ceasefire, initiatives to grant humanitarian aid to save the population of the Gaza Strip, the termination of its blockade, the restoration of water supply, electricity and food deliveries are required.

“The purpose of the draft resolution that we submitted to the Security Council together with China and Arab countries was to achieve these goals,” he told BelTA.

The US, which has traditionally protected Israel, its ally in the Middle East, in the Security Council rejected the Russian text, with US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield sharply complaining that by avoiding “condemning Hamas”, Russia is “providing cover to a terrorist organization that commits atrocities against innocent civilians’, which is ‘scandalous’, ‘hypocritical’ and ‘impossible to support’.