Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, accused Moscow on Monday of causing “massive suffering and devastation” in Ukraine, taking advantage of the presence in New York of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who traveled to chair a special meeting of the Security Council. The Portuguese warned about the situation of tension between powers up to “a historical maximum, with risks of conflict due to misadventure or miscalculation”, a dark panorama reminiscent of the Cold War that Lavrov himself fueled in his intervention.
“As was the case during the Cold War, we have reached a dangerous threshold, perhaps even more dangerous,” said the Russian Foreign Minister, in one of the thorniest visits by the Russian delegation to the UN headquarters in New York. . The theme chosen as part of the rotating presidency, the maintenance of peace, international security and the defense of the principles of the United Nations charter through multilateralism, is one that appears to have been systematically violated in the last year. . Even so, Lavrov did not hesitate to charge the West for having acted unilaterally against the rest of the world.
In his 20-minute speech, Lavrov accused the United States of “strangling multilateralism” and of not respecting the sovereignty of countries, one of the pillars on which the United Nations was founded, ignoring the invasion of Ukraine launched by the troops. of his country, which has already caused thousands of deaths and displacement. “The United States has embarked on the path of destroying globalization, which for many years was presented as the greatest benefit for humanity,” he noted.
Lavrov harshly criticized the “illegitimate unilateral measures” imposed on his country and other states as a result of the war and denounced the manipulation of trade rules and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. However, he made no reference to the wishes of the Vladimir Putin regime to end the conflict, a matter he did address during his visit to Brazil last week. He said seven days ago that they intend to shelve the fighting “in a lasting and immediate way”, although the prevailing climate in the various open fronts in Ukraine seems to clearly indicate the opposite: that the end of the war is still far away.
He also referred to the absence of the Russian press in New York to cover the session of the Security Council that his country presides over because he did not obtain the necessary visas to travel to the US. He asked the journalists present from other countries to do “impartial” coverage so that the world can know what is happening.
Even before getting on the plane from Moscow on Sunday, the foreign minister expressed his outrage at the situation and suggested that they will take strong measures in response. “A country that calls itself the strongest, the smartest, the free and the fair has chickened out and done a stupid thing by showing what its sworn guarantees on the protection of free speech and access are really worth. information,” he said from the Russian capital. “Be assured that we will not forget and we will not forgive,” he said.
All this in the midst of the high tension between both nations after the arrest last month of the Wall Street Journal journalist, Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage. The US has called the case a “wrongful arrest.”
It is by no means the ideal climate to negotiate one of the key issues of the meeting: the renewal of the agreement for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, which has allowed the Kiev government to continue maintaining its main exports. It expires on May 18, so it is imperative for Guterres to reach an agreement to avoid a worsening of the food and inflation situation that was triggered by the war in February of last year.
Lavrov was scheduled to meet the UN leader on Monday as part of a two-day agenda in which he will chair a Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither the United States nor the other European members of the Council sent their foreign ministers to the meeting, represented by their ambassadors to the UN.
All of them have expressed their rejection of the Russian presidency of the Council in the current circumstances, accusing Moscow of using its permanent seat to spread false information about the war in Ukraine. Before the meeting, Olof Skoog, the European Union’s ambassador to the UN, underlined the level of cynicism implied in the current position of the Putin regime. “By hosting this debate, Russia is trying to present itself as a defender of the UN Charter and multilateralism,” he said. “Nothing can be further from the truth”.
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