“This was about making it clear that being a voting member of the Human Rights Council is not consistent with Russia’s actions. Russia’s gross and systematic violations of human rights made a mockery of its membership.”

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Western officials said the high number of abstaining nations showed the extent of Moscow’s bullying.

The Kremlin labelled the vote “illegal” and “politically motivated”. The Russian news agency RIA quoted the deputy Russian ambassador to the UN, Gennady Kuzmin, as saying the country had decided to give up its membership immediately.

Russian troops have left behind dead civilians, crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid as it retreats promising to refocus its efforts in Ukraine’s east.

The civilian death toll in the port city of Mariupol has passed more than 5000, including 210 children, its mayor said as new claims emerged of other war crimes by Putin’s forces.

Vadym Boichenko said the toll also included fatalities from the bombing of hospitals, including one where 50 people burnt to death, and that more than 90 per cent of his city’s infrastructure was destroyed by Russian bombardments.

Ukrainian officials have reported another 118 air strikes on the city in the past 24 hours.

In the past week, images have emerged from the city of Bucha, a suburb of the capital, Kyiv, where hundreds of civilian bodies were found in the streets and in mass graves following Russia’s withdrawal from the area.

The US-led resolution expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine”. A two-thirds majority of voting members in the 193-member UN General Assembly in New York – abstentions do not count – was needed to suspend Russia from the 47-member Geneva-based Human Rights Council.

It was the third resolution adopted by the UN since Moscow invaded neighbouring Ukraine on February 24. The previous assembly resolutions denouncing Russia were adopted with 141 and 140 votes in favour.

Prior to the vote, Ukrainian UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya urged countries to support the resolution.

“Bucha and dozens of other Ukrainian cities and villages, where thousands of peaceful residents have been killed, tortured, raped, abducted and robbed by the Russian Army, serve as an example of how dramatically far the Russian Federation has gone from its initial declarations in the human rights domain. That is why this case is unique and today’s response is obvious and self-explanatory,” he said.

Gennady Kuzmin, deputy Russian UN ambassador, called for countries to “vote against the attempt by western countries and their allies to destroy the existing human rights architecture”.

Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council alongside the United Kingdom, China, France, and the US. The council’s main responsibility is the maintenance of international peace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Russia to also be removed from it.

No permanent member of the Security Council had ever had its membership revoked from any UN body before Thursday’s vote.

In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president was not worried about ending up in the International Criminal Court and that the Kremlin saw no “possibility for that”.

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He said that Russia did not support or recognise the court and “we are not the only country in the world who are doing that”.

“And we are interested in a really independent and objective investigation of all the crimes,” he said.

Separately, Zelensky warned the situation in the Ukrainian town of Borodyanka was “significantly more dreadful” than in nearby Bucha.

The killing of civilians in Bucha have been widely condemned by the West as war crimes, increasing pressure for stricter sanctions against Russia.

The US will send new weapon systems to Ukraine, Washington’s top diplomat said after NATO foreign ministers agreed to accelerate arms deliveries.

Urged by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to end bureaucracy-driven delays, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States and 30 other countries were sending weapons to Ukraine; a process he said would intensify.

“We’re not going to let anything stand in the way of getting Ukrainians what they need, and what we believe, to be effective,” Blinken said.

He spoke of “new systems” that have so far not been provided by NATO allies, but declined to go into details.

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Australia is sending special combat vehicles to Ukraine. Twenty army Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles, including two ambulance variants, following a request from Zelensky during his address to the Australian parliament on March 31.

Finland and Sweden are discussing joining NATO as part of talks between foreign ministers from the military alliance in Brussels this week, a senior US State Department official said.

“Obviously this is going to be those countries’ choices to make,” said the official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

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