The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

Nonetheless, on the day of the vote, I was worried. I knew that Russia’s closest allies would take its side, and we presumed that many countries would abstain in order to avoid angering Putin. We had also heard from several developing countries that Russian diplomats were offering cash in return for their support. In the General Assembly, each country’s representative presses a button and his or her vote instantaneously appears on a digital jumbo screen beside the country’s name: green for YES, red for NO, and yellow for ABSTAIN. The green YES votes of the United States and Ukraine—voting for the resolution and rejecting the validity of the referendum—were among the first to appear. Russia was naturally first among the NO votes. Other countries seemed to be taking their time, and my heart beat wildly in suspense. One by one, the votes appeared. In the upper right of the screen, I saw a flash of green, followed by another flash of green in the lower left, then another in the upper left. For thirty seconds, flash after flash came up green. So many of the countries that had been undecided—that had privately confessed their fear that Russia would retaliate against them if they sided with the United States and Ukraine—came through. The final vote on whether to reject Russia’s referendum proved a rout: 100 YES votes with the United States and Ukraine, just 11 NO votes, and 58 ABSTENTIONS.* The Associated Press described the result as “a sweeping rebuke of Moscow.”