The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Thursday voted to suspend Russia from the organization’s leading human rights body. The move came amid allegations of horrific rights violations by Russian soldiers in Ukraine while retreating from the region’s capital.

Both the United States and Ukraine have said that the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes.

The vote was 93-24 with 58 abstentions, but their votes did not count towards the final tally.

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The brief resolution expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly at the reports of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation, including gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights.”

The vote makes Moscow the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to ever have its membership revoked from any UN body.

“War criminals have no place in UN bodies aimed at protecting human rights. Grateful to all member states which supported the relevant UNGA resolution and chose the right side of history,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.

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Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed regret about the decision. “We’re sorry about that,” Peskov said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News. “And we’ll continue to defend our interests using every possible legal means,” he said.

The suspension means that Russia will not enjoy the privileges of membership of the 47 member body and cannot propose or vote on resolutions or amendments at the HRC. This makes Russia at par with other 146 observer states at the HRC.

The call to strip Russia came followed videos and photos of streets in the town of Bucha where corpses were scattered.

“We believe that the members of the Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine, and we believe that Russia needs to be held accountable,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Monday. “We cannot let a member state that is subverting every principle we hold dear to continue to sit on the UN Human Rights Council.”

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the UNGA vote on Thursday. “A country that’s perpetrating gross and systematic violations of human rights should not sit on a body whose job it is to protect those rights,” he told reporters.

The UN Human Rights Office has said that Russian military has killed at least 1104 civilians, including at least 96 children. The UN refugee agency reported that over 3.7 million people have been forced to flee Ukraine.