The UN Security Council will no longer vote on Friday on a Russian-drafted call for aid access and civilian protection in Ukraine as Russia's UN envoy accused Western countries of a campaign of "unprecedented pressure" against the measure.

"Many colleagues from many delegations tell us about unprecedented pressure by Western partners, that their arms are being twisted, including blackmail and threats," Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Thursday.

Speaking at a council meeting on Ukraine's humanitarian situation, requested by Western council members, Nebenzia said: "We do understand how difficult it is for those countries to withstand this kind of onslaught."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Reuters after the meeting: "The only people who do arm-twisting around here are the Russians and they have to if they want to get anybody to support them."

Nebenzia said that Russia had instead requested the council meet on Friday – when the vote had been scheduled – to discuss "U.S. bio-laboratories in Ukraine using the new documents we obtained in the course of the special military operation." 

"We received documentation from Ukrainian employees at the biological laboratories on the urgent destruction of especially dangerous pathogens, plague, anthrax, cholera and other deadly diseases on February 24," Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said earlier.

At a UN Security Council meeting on the same issue last week, also requested by Russia, Thomas-Greenfield said there are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States. The United Nations also said it had no evidence Ukraine had a biological weapons program.

The UN human rights agency has recorded 726 deaths, including 52 children, and 1,174 people injured, including 63 children, between February 24 and March 15, U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council on Thursday.

The "actual number is likely much higher," she said.

(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: A volunteer of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces assists a woman in crossing a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, March 16, 2022. /CFP)