- Russia wanted a UN vote over whether to condemn its actions in Ukraine to be a secret ballot.
- The UN roundly rejected that on Monday, and the vote is set to be held in public later this week.
The United Nations rejected Russian efforts to make a vote over condemning Russia's attempted annexation of occupied parts of Ukraine into a secret ballot.
The UN General Assembly held an emergency special session on Monday over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where it rejected a proposal supported by Russia for the vote to be held in private, where how each country voted would stay secret.
The vote is over a draft resolution that would condemn Russia's "attempted illegal annexation" of four regions of Ukraine, where sham referendums were held in September on the question of those regions joining Russia.
The resolution would demand that Russia "immediately and unconditionally" drop the supposed annexations and withdraw from Ukraine immediately, according to The Associated Press.
A majority of member countries voted on Monday that the vote should be held in public. 107 countries said it should be public, 13 said it should be private, and 39 abstained, Reuters reported. China and Russia did not vote.
The vote is now set to take place in public on Wednesday or Thursday, according to Reuters.
Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia had argued that the vote should be a secret one.
He said Western lobbying would mean "it may be very difficult if positions are expressed publicly," per a letter seen by Reuters.
Dr Patrick Butchard, a senior lecturer in international law at the UK's Edge Hill University, told Insider that it wasn't clear which countries Nebenzia felt would be affected, but that a secret ballot "would have added an element of ambiguity" to the proceedings.
"Russian diplomacy often uses this sort of ambiguity to support its wider narratives at the UN," said Butchard, who specializes in UN developments.
"Some states may have secretly voted to support Russia where they have not been so explicitly more recently," he said.
He added that it could also have worked the other way around, with countries that Russia thinks are its allies voting to condemn it.
Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody, a lecturer in politics and international studies at the UK's Open University, agreed that a secret vote may have emboldened some countries both for or against Russia.
But she said Russia would have anticipated the failure of its secrecy request, "knowing they can use it to pretend that the UN is biased against Russia."
She was scathing about Russia's request.
"Russia has forged ahead with coercive and manipulated sham referenda in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine," she told Insider. "It's a bit rich to then argue that it's unfair for the UN to vote on the legality of that in the open."
Unlike Security Council votes, where Russia has a veto, General Assembly votes are not legally binding. That means that, if the resolution passes, Russia will not be forced to abandon its annexation efforts by the UN.
Nebenzia claimed that this violated procedural rules and was an "unprecedented manipulation."
But such a process would actually be a very unusual move at the UN, where most votes are held in public.
Russia in September vetoed a Security Council resolution — that would have been legally binding — declaring the claimed annexations in Ukraine illegal, per the AP.
The resolution was drafted before Russia's bombardment on Monday of numerous cities and regions of Ukraine, including some that had not been attacked in months.
But Russia's new escalation was clearly top of mind during the UN debate.
Ukrainian Ambassador Sergey Kyslytsya then said that Russia "has proven once again that it is a terrorist state that must be deterred in the strongest possible ways," the AP reported.
Turkey's UN representative Feridun Sinirlioğlu said the attacks were "deeply worrying and unacceptable," per the AP.