GENEVA, March 28, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Russia on Friday ushered a resolution through the UN Human Rights Council, a first since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in what observers said signals a growing push to re-enter the global stage.

The text tabled by Russia seemed bland, merely calling on countries to properly celebrate the 60th anniversary of the adoption of international human rights covenants.

It passed with 26 of the council's 47 members voting in favour and no votes opposing, but with 21 mainly Western countries abstaining.

The passage marked a first for a Russia-drafted text since the country was suspended from the council after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Council observers said Russia had used a seemingly innocuous text to make it difficult for countries to vote against it.

"The resolution tabled by the Russian Federation is a cynical effort to re-engage with a body from which it was ejected four years ago," Dave Elseroad, of the Human Rights House Foundation, told AFP.

"States seeking to promote and protect human rights must be prepared for a more aggressive Russian posture at the Human Rights Council and across the multilateral system," he warned.

Before the vote, a Russian representative called for support from all "states for whom concern for human rights is not just a political slogan".

A number of Western diplomats took the floor to say they fully supported the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted by the General Assembly in 1966, but that they could not vote for the text.

"We do not consider it appropriate for Russia to present this text to the council when it is in flagrant breach of so many of the principles and values contained in these treaties," Britain's human rights ambassador Eleanor Sanders told the council.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Cypriot ambassador Olympia Neocleous highlighted that investigators appointed by the council had determined that Russian authorities had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ukraine.

She condemned Russia's "blatant disrespect for universally recognised human rights standards".

Russia said it had secured dozens of co-sponsors for its text, with several countries taking the floor to chastise those refusing to back the resolution simply because it was authored by Moscow.

China's representative decried intensifying "politicisation and polarisation" at the council and charged that "double standards are increasingly rampant".