Russia and China on Wednesday accused the United States and Britain of illegally attacking military sites used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels to launch missiles at commercial vessels in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood and UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward countered that the Houthi attacks are illegal, and their “proportionate and legal action” against the Yemen rebels are being taken in self-defense.
Woodward said the Houthi attacks are “driving up the costs of global shipping, including the costs of food supplies and humanitarian aid in the region.”
But Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky and China’s U.N. envoy Zhang Jun argued that the U.N. Security Council never authorized military action against Yemen.
Technically, there is some added nuance to this:
Yemen is split between political factions such as the contemporary president attempting to establish a government in the south and the Houthi leadership who have used military force to take control in the north.
China and Russia are speaking out about the fact that some of Iran’s and Yemen’s military supplies warehouses were struck in addition to the official non-state-sponsored™ “rebels” controlled sites.
So while China is right in saying the USA and UK backed by several other nations attacked a non-hostile nation, it’s also clearly posturing and ignorance of the facts that those target sites were weapons actively being used against them or otherwise against other innocents including potentially their own peoples.