Updated with Kremlin's remarks.
The Kremlin on Friday condemned the United States and the United Kingdom for military strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, while Russia's mission to the UN requested an urgent Security Council session.
The U.S. and U.K. air forces said they struck multiple Houthi targets in Yemen late on Thursday in retaliation to the rebels’ attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
“From the point of view of international law, they are illegitimate," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the strikes on Friday.
But Peskov also repeated calls for Houthi rebels to “abandon the practice” of attacking commercial vessels, which he characterized as “extremely wrong.”
Russia's Foreign Ministry earlier on Friday issued a similar condemnation of the attacks by the U.S. and Britain.
“[Washington and London showed] total disregard for international law in the name of escalating the situation in the region for their own destructive purposes,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the messaging app Telegram.
“The U.S. airstrikes on Yemen are yet another example of the Anglo-Saxons’ perversion of UN Security Council resolutions,” Zakharova wrote.
During a televised briefing, Zakharova said the attacks in Yemen posed a “direct threat to global peace and security.”
She called on the international community to condemn the U.S. and Britain for the strikes.
Russia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said it requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the U.S.-British strikes, which is expected to take place later on Friday.
