The session of the assembly, devoted exclusively to the situation in Ukraine, opened at 10 in the morning and 24 speakers took the floor during the morning shift. Taking into account that there were 86 registered for the speakers’ time, it is possible that it will be extended until Thursday.
The tone of the speeches was very similar to the last meeting of the Security Council called urgently last Monday night. In it, countries that had been equidistant for months (mainly Africans, but also Mexico) unequivocally condemned Russia’s recognition of the self-proclaimed republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.
They considered that this represented an attack once morest the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member state and therefore a violation of the founding charter of the UN, an idea that was repeated once more and once more by the speakers before the assembly.
Russia: “My country might not be indifferent to the fate of the people of Donbas”
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, did not flinch at the chorus of condemnations, justifying the Russian intervention (and sending troops) in Donbas: “In the face of the flagrant genocide and the trampling of the most important of human rights , the right to life, our country might not remain indifferent to the fate of the 4 million inhabitants of Donbas,” he said.
According to the Russian version, the world shows “complete indifference to the fate of the people of Donbas”, who suffer “a systematic deprivation of their basic rights on ethnic grounds”.
Nebenzia, who made no mention of the sanctions applied since yesterday by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, even allowed himself to disqualify the words of the Secretary General himself, António Guterres, ironically asking himself “what he means by that offering his good offices,” as Guterres had previously said.
China seems to ignore the events of the past few days
The Chinese representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, acted as if nothing new had happened in the last 48 hours and repeated his words from last week before the Security Council: that the crisis in Ukraine is explained “by a deep network of factors historical”, that the parties to the conflict “must show restraint” and that any dialogue “must take into account the concerns of each one”.
It was precisely this equidistance that was denounced by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, who expressly traveled to New York to ask the assembly for “concrete actions” and not just words, and to remind his diplomatic colleagues that talking regarding what is happening in Ukraine without naming the Russian aggressor is playing into the hands of the latter country and giving the impression that flouting international legality has no consequences.
Ukraine: “Kiev is not planning any intervention”
Kuleba insisted that his country “does not plan any intervention in Donbas (the eastern region of Ukraine) but continues to work for diplomacy”, and this despite the fact that “Russian propaganda works hard to create pretexts for an invasion”. .
In subsequent statements to journalists, Kuleba was more explicit and asked the allied countries and the defenders of international legality “more sanctions, more weapons and more diplomatic efforts”, all simultaneously, and defended his country’s right to become ” with defensive weapons” to deter a possible Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory.
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