United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for maintaining contact with Russia to save lives in Ukraine and prepare for peace, even if no peaceful settlement of the conflict is currently in sight.
“It is clear that at present there is no chance of an immediate peace agreement or ceasefire,” he told reporters in Vienna, where he happens to be at a UN meeting.
But “this war will not last forever. The time will come when peace negotiations will be on the table. The time will come, I hope, for a solution to the problem, ”said the 73-year-old official.
With this in mind, the man who, along with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, is one of the few Western leaders to have met Vladimir Putin since the start of the war, defended his strategy.
“If you want to solve a problem, you have to deal with those who caused the problem or can solve it”, he justified, alongside Mr. Nehammer. “So it makes full sense to talk to the leader of the Russian Federation.”
According to him, his meeting on April 26 with Mr. Putin contributed to “saving the lives of civilians” in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, via the organization of UN convoys.
“We will carry out other operations of this type, I am sure, but we cannot make them public until they are finalized”, added the head of the United Nations.
Since the start of the conflict, the UN, whose mission is to guarantee peace in the world, has been intervening in Ukraine and neighboring countries in a role that has hitherto been mainly humanitarian.