REUTERS

"The principle of the election of the non-permanent members of the Security Council is based on a regional approach,” Sergeyev said.

“The UN has five regional groups. It is from these groups that the UN Security Council members are elected on a rotation basis. Currently, the Central and Eastern European group, to which Ukraine belongs, is represented at the UN Security Council by Lithuania. This year we are going to take part in the elections. We have no rivals in the group this time," Sergeyev said.

According to him, to be elected Ukraine has to be supported by 2/3 of votes (128 votes), depending on the number of delegates that are present in the session hall of the UN General Assembly.

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"But our goal is more ambitious, we want to win higher than 2/3 of the supporting votes. The majority support gives more weight, more legitimacy. Despite the fact that we go to elections without competition in the group, we will continue to work intensively with each delegation, each sub-regional group, each regional group to understand their problems.

“This is because being in the Security Council, we will have to think not only about ourselves but also about a range of global issues. That is why we need to understand the problems of each country and the region." 

The Ukrainian ambassador emphasized that Russia would not prevent Ukraine from becoming a member of the Security Council due to the lack of reasonable objections.

"Russia, of course, may be involved in some kind of backstage work, convincing someone not to support us. But I do not think that they will succeed, their support is formed of 11 countries, as we could see when voting for the adoption of last year's resolution [resolution in support of Ukraine, adopted by the UN General Assembly on March 27, 2014, that was not supported by 11 countries: Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe]" Sergeyev said.

When asked why it was so important for Ukraine to become a member of the Security Council, Sergeyev said that the status itself did not make a difference.

However, "being at the heart of the Security Council makes it easier to bring people together around concrete actions, specific projects, specific requirements, [working out] what to do, and how."