Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to address the UN Security Council on Wednesday, facing permanent member Russia for the first time since the war began.
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is bogged down, the Ukrainian president continues his diplomatic offensive in New York where the great leaders of the world are gathered, in the notable absence of the Chinese Xi Jinping and the Russian Vladimir Putin.
He is among the first to speak during this monster special meeting, carefully calibrated, where more than sixty speakers are planned under the Albanian presidency, according to the agenda consulted by AFP.
The meeting is taking place at a high level and many leaders are expected to speak.
This is the first time since the start of the Russian invasion of his country, on February 24, 2022, that President Zelensky will speak in person before the UN Security Council, a body which moreover is paralyzed at this time. subject due to the Russian veto.
Russia, in fact, will be represented by its Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov who arrived Tuesday evening in New York, at the same level as the United States and France with Antony Blinken and Catherine Colonna respectively.
It is not clear whether Lavrov will attend President Zelensky’s speech in person or be represented during his speech, as was already the case during a Council meeting at the level of heads of diplomacy.
Apart from the United States, no other permanent member of the Security Council is represented at the highest level at this annual diplomatic high mass that is the UN General Assembly and which begins its second day on Wednesday. of speech. Absences that some diplomats see as a bad sign for the UN.
The day will also be intense with the highly anticipated bilateral meeting between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the sidelines of the Assembly.
Addressing the General Assembly on Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky, dressed as usual in military fatigues, accused Russia of committing “genocide” in Ukraine, trying to rally southern countries to his cause. sometimes skeptical, telling them that they too had an interest in Kiev’s victory.
He argued that Russia uses food and nuclear energy “as a weapon”, which impacts Ukraine as well as “the rest of the world”.
“For the first time in modern history, we have the opportunity to put an end to this aggression on the terms of the attacked country,” he said, inviting world leaders opposed to Russian aggression to help prepare “a peace summit”.
After a year and a half of war with cascading impacts on the world, particularly on food security, certain countries of the South are pleading more and more openly for a diplomatic solution.
Several leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have called for “intensifying” peace efforts because “war will have no winners and peace no losers.”
For Olga Oliker, of the International Crisis Group, “although it is far from being the only conflict shaking the world, Russia’s war in Ukraine concerns both the defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the future of the European security order and global security for years to come. The stakes are high for all of us.”
After New York, the Ukrainian president, who is also due to meet Wednesday with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, must go to Washington on Thursday to be received by the American president, who leads the coalition in support of Kiev.
Tuesday, also at the UN, the latter castigated Russia which “believes that the world will tire and let it brutalize Ukraine without consequences”.
Gathered on Monday on the sidelines of the Assembly, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries recognized that “Russia is establishing itself over the long term” and that international support for Ukraine must also be “medium and long term”, according to a senior American diplomat.
“It is of course a question of showing that he (the Russian president) cannot prevail but also of ensuring equitable sharing of the burden and of long-term planning,” he confided under cover of anonymity.
09/20/2023 05:00:36 – United Nations (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
