Presiding over her first open meeting of the United Nations Security Council since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield implored representatives still clinging to neutrality to speak out against Russian aggression.

"The truth is well known. Russia is the only perpetrator of this war. So it's hard to understand why some council members continue to call on all parties to desist," Thomas-Greenfield said, calling out countries like Brazil, India, and to some extent—China.

"Let's call a spade a spade. Members should call on Russia explicitly to stop its aggression against Ukraine," she said.

Speaking in her capacity as the United States’ permanent representative and not as the temporary president of the council, Thomas-Greenfield lamented that Russian envoys had repeatedly used the body to spread disinformation.

"Three months ago, Russian representatives told this council they had no intention to invade Ukraine. Now, Russia claims the attacks aren’t real or never happened," she said. "Russia even claims that Ukraine is attacking itself, that they bombed their own buildings, attacked their own people and assaulted their own democracy. These lies defy all logic, all evidence and common sense."

-ABC News' Shannon Crawford

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, confirmed another convoy is heading to the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol and is expected to arrive on Friday to evacuate more trapped civilians.

"As we speak, a convoy is proceeding to get to Azovstal by tomorrow morning, hopefully, to receive those civilians remaining in that bleak hell that they have inhabited for so many weeks and months and take them back to safety," Griffiths said Thursday at the International Donor's Conference in Warsaw, Poland.

"This elaborate and dangerous operation has taken days and a herculean effort in coordination, advocacy agreements, deployment partnership to achieve," Griffiths said. "It would have been worth it to save one person. And we're now trying to do it for more, but it's a sobering reminder of the difficulties of operation for the safety and protection of the civilians of Ukraine."

Though many people have been evacuated this week, hundreds of Ukrainian fighters and civilians are said to still be trapped inside the plant. The sprawling industrial site is the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol as Russian forces claim to have taken full control of the strategic Ukrainian port city.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview last week with an Italian news channel that Ukraine could still have Nazi elements, even if some figures, including the country's president, were Jewish. Lavrov also claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry.

Israeli Prime Minister Natfali Bennett spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone Thursday and, according to a readout from Bennett's office, the Israeli president "accepted President Putin's apology for Lavrov's remarks." There is no mention of an apology in the Kremlin's readout of the meeting.

The presidents also spoke about exploring options to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. According to the Kremlin, Russian forces stand ready to ensure the safe exit of civilians. The Kremlin added that Ukraine should give an order for fighters at the plant to lay down their arms.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko defended Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine during an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, but said he didn't expect it to "drag on this way" and that he was doing "everything" to stop the war.

The 67-year-old authoritarian leader alleged that Ukraine was "provoking Russia," prompting Moscow to launch the invasion on Feb. 24.

"But I am not immersed in this problem enough to say whether it goes according to plan, like the Russians say, or like I feel it," Lukashenko told the AP in a sit-down interview at Independence Palace in Minsk. "I want to stress one more time: I feel like this operation has dragged on."

He insisted that Belarus stands for peace and repeatedly called for an end to the war -- a term that the Kremlin refuses to use when referring to its invasion of Ukraine, instead calling it a "special military operation."

"We categorically do not accept any war. We have done and are doing everything now so that there isn't a war. Thanks to yours truly, me that is, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have begun," Lukashenko told the AP. "But why is Ukraine, on whose territory a war in effect is ongoing, military action, people are dying -- why is Ukraine not interested in these negotiations?"

Russia deployed forces to Belarus under the pretext of military drills before sending them into Ukraine as part of the invasion. Lukashenko has publicly supported the operation but stopped short of deploying his own troops there. Speaking to the AP, the Belarusian leader said his country poses no danger to others, even as its military conducts drills this week.

"We do not threaten anyone and we are not going to threaten and will not do it," he said. "Moreover, we can't threaten -- we know who opposes us, so to unleash some kind of a conflict, some kind of war here in the West is absolutely not in the interests of the Belarusian state. So the West can sleep peacefully."

Lukashenko blamed Western countries, especially the United States, for fueling the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He also alleged that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was taking orders from Washington, adding that "everything will stop within a week" if U.S. President Joe Biden said so.

"The U.S. wants to seize the moment, tying its allies to itself, and drown Russia in the war with Ukraine. It's their goal -- to sort out Russia, and then China," he told the AP. "Today it's not Zelenskyy who’s running Ukraine -- no offense, that’s my point of view, maybe I'm wrong."

Jalina Porter, the State Department's deputy spokesperson, is responding to the Russian attack at a Ukraine train station that killed at least 50, saying, "We can no longer be surprised by the Kremlin's repugnant disregard for human life."

Five children were among those killed when Russian rockets struck the station in Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast on Friday morning, according to Ukraine's state-owned railway company. At least 100 people were injured, according to Donetsk Oblast Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russia has denied involvement in the attack, which occurred as "thousands" of civilians fleeing the Russian invasion were at the train station waiting to be taken to "safer regions of Ukraine," according to Kyrylenko.

"Civilians are killed when they stay in their homes, and they're killed when they try to leave," Porter said. "Actions like these demonstrate why Russia did not belong on the U.N. Human Rights Council, and they also reinforce the U.S. assessment that members of Russian forces are committing war crimes in Ukraine."

Porter declined to say if the department considers the train station attack a war crime, saying, "Assessing individual criminal liability in specific cases is the responsibility of courts, as well as other investigatory bodies. But as the secretary, Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, has said, 'Those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities committed in Ukraine will be held to account.'"

-ABC News' Conor Finnegan