It will, without a doubt, be a historic moment. At the UN General Assembly in New York, Volodymyr Zelensky will speak from the podium this Tuesday, September 19. A first. Last year, the Ukrainian president was able to deliver a message by video, calling for several sanctions against Russia.
This year, the message should be much the same, with the announcement that a concrete proposal will be made to UN member states to strengthen the principle of territorial integrity. The speech of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will also be followed. Brazil has not taken economic sanctions against Russia and is calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
The Ukrainian president is increasing his trips and meetings. He stayed in his country for almost a year, welcoming various foreign leaders to kyiv, before making his first official visit in December 2022 to the United States. Since then, always in khaki shirt and pants, the man who embodies Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion has been struggling to receive financial and material aid for his country.
At the UN forum, there will undoubtedly be less talk of arms deliveries, such as the Scalp missiles or F-16s recently, than calls for renewed support for Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion, an overwhelming majority of countries have adopted several resolutions at the UN General Assembly supporting Ukraine and its territorial integrity or calling for Russian withdrawal. But a little music is being heard more and more for the settlement of the conflict through a diplomatic solution.
This is the case of Brazil, one of the rare countries that has not implemented sanctions against Moscow and has not delivered weapons to kyiv. A permanent member of the UN Security Council, like Russia, China is trying to position itself as a mediator. She presented last February her “position on the political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis”, a catalog of good intentions which had remained a dead letter.
Kiev is still sticking to its positions: the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territories occupied since 2014, including Crimea, and conquered by Moscow since February 2022, is an obligatory prelude before peace negotiations. “For us, it is very important that our words, all our messages are heard by our partners,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday while meeting Ukrainian soldiers wounded at the front in a New York hospital.
“Ukraine will present a concrete proposal to UN member states on how to strengthen the principle of territorial integrity and improve the UN’s ability to thwart and stop aggression,” he also indicated on X (formerly Twitter). On the front, the Ukrainian army is advancing step by step in the Robotyne sector, in the south of the country, after having broken through the first line of defense set up by the Russians. In the east, breakthroughs were also announced near Bakhmout, a town that has become a symbol of the violence of the fighting.
Olena @ZelenskaUA and I arrived in the United States for the high-level week of the UN General Assembly and a visit to Washington, D.C. I will attend the General Assembly, SDG Summit, and Security Council meetings at the UN, as well as a number of important bilateral talks.…
The Ukrainian president will then travel to Washington to meet Joe Biden. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has released nearly $77 billion in aid to Ukraine. It is Uncle Sam’s country which also supplies the bulk of military equipment, with hundreds of artillery pieces and ammunition.
