Canada’s permanent mission to the UN caused a stir on Twitter after posting a letter signed by Russia’s permanent representative to the international organization’s Security Council, Vasily Nebenzia.
The post, shared on Thursday, shows the document being heavily annotated in red to highlight what Canadian diplomacy deems to be falsehoods coming from Russia.
The letter mentions in particular that Russia is “concerned” about the “deterioration” of the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, a sentence that has been turned to the negative by Canada, Russia being “the main cause” of this humanitarian crisis.
Several sentences of the letter, which accused Ukraine of various crimes, were also crossed out and changed to call on Russia to recognize “the suffering” it is causing Ukrainians.
The letter, which has been shared thousands of times on Twitter, startled Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy. On the social networkhe accused Canadian diplomacy of waging a campaign of “Russophobic slander”.
“It only shows that your diplomatic skills and good manners are at an all-time low and gives an idea of why your country’s candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council has been rejected twice in 20 years (sic) by the members of the UN,” he added, incisively.
Canada tried unsuccessfully to obtain a seat on the Security Council for the first time in 2010 and then a second time in 2020.
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