Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a sharp rebuke of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s international backers on Saturday in a United Nations Security Council meeting that afforded a face-off with Russian and Chinese envoys.

“It’s not a surprise that those who rule without democracy in their own countries are trying to prop up Maduro while he is in dire straits,” Pompeo told the Security Council, in a specific reference to “our Russian and Chinese colleagues” at the meeting.

Those comments continued an argument that began earlier Saturday, when the Security Council debated the decision to hold a meeting on the Venezuela crisis. Russia kicked off the discussion by denouncing the meeting as an “gross abuse” of the Security Council by the United States, arguing that the crisis is an internal Venezuelan problem and that President Trump’s team is unjustly threatening a foreign government.

Pompeo dismissed that argument by referencing to the humanitarian crisis in the country, which is suffering from food and medicine shortages, along with the collapse of its currency.

“We’re here because scores of Venezuelan women, some of them teenagers, have fled Maduro’s madness to other countries, and in desperation turned to prostitution to survive,” he said. “Three million Venezuelans have been forced to flee their homeland, thereby flooding the region and threatening international peace and security. Maduro’s prisons are full of political prisoners unjustly behind bars, and the graveyards hold dissidents and protesters that have been killed by this regime.”

Russia’s envoy characterized the Trump administration's actions as "unceremoniously and in breach of all norms of international law an attempt by Washington to engineer a coup d'etat" in Venezuela, an allegation that echoed Maduro’s rhetoric throughout the crisis.

“Venezuela does not represent a threat to peace and security,” Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said during the council meeting. “If anything does represent a threat to peace, it is the shameless and aggressive actions of the United States and their allies in the ouster of the legitimately-elected president of Venezuela.”

Maduro took the oath of office on Jan. 10, but the Organization of American States — an international organization comprised of 35 member-states of the Western Hemisphere, from Canada to Argentina — voted that same day “to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro’s new term” because his victory was “the result of an illegitimate electoral process.”

Trump recognized a prominent Maduro opponent, lawmaker Juan Guaido, as interim president on Wednesday. Trump was joined in doing so by a majority of the OAS — including major Latin American democracies such as Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina. In that context, Pompeo tied Russian and Chinese decisions to the corruption of Maduro’s regime.

“China and Russia are propping up a failed regime in hopes of recovering billions of dollars in ill-considered investments and assistance made over the years,” he said. “This money was never intended to help the Venezuelan people; it lined the pockets of the Maduro regime, its cronies, and its benefactors.”