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On December 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited his ally, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in Minsk. The Kremlin denied Putin’s visit was to try and drag Belarus into joining Russia’s war in Ukraine.On the sidelines of the Minsk meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the press that the West had failed to isolate Russia: "These attempts (to isolate Russia) are futile. These vain attempts by our Western colleagues have not found any material embodiment." This statement is misleading. Russia remains a member of the United Nations Security Council, but a series of U.N. General Assembly votes to condemn the invasion of Ukraine was passed by a large margin. Russia remains suspended from the group of the world's leading industrialized nations, which is now known as the G-7. The Russian president did not attend a G-20 summit in Indonesia; Western economic sanctions slashed Russia's GDP and budget, and reportedly, only Iran has agreed to help Russia with arms supplies.Isolation of Russia in the United Nations and G-20 The isolation of Russia is especially evident in the U.N. In a series of votes after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most U.N. members supported Ukraine and disapproved of Russia.Only a small number of countries, which are also under Western sanctions, such as North Korea and Syria, continued to support Russia during the voting.On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On March 2, 2022, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Russia completely withdraw its troops from the territory of Ukraine and cancel the decision to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.The resolution was adopted with 141 votes in favor (77.90% of votes) and 35 abstentions. Only five countries (2.76% of votes) voted against the resolution: Russia itself and four countries that are called authoritarian regimes by the UK-based The Economist Intelligence Unit's democracy index: Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria. On March 24, the General Assembly adopted a second resolution demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine, as well as expressing serious concern and condemning attacks by the Russian army on the civilian population and infrastructure in Ukraine. The resolution passed with 140 votes in favor, with 38 abstentions. The same five authoritarian countries voted against it.On October 12, 2022, the General Assembly declared so-called Russian referendums in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions and an attempted annexation invalid and illegal under international law. The U.N. called on all states not to recognize these territories as part of Russia.In addition, the U.N. demanded that Russia immediately
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