UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday as part of a peacekeeping mission to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tomorrow after he visited Russia yesterday “for logistical reasons”, although the order of the visits did not please the Ukrainian representative .
“The order of the visits was a question of logistics. The letters were sent from New York to the two governments; Russia replied beforehand, and when it arrived from Ukraine, this visit was planned,” explained the spokesman for the Efe agency , Saviano Andreu of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), the humanitarian arm of the United Nations.
Guterres entered Ukraine via the Polish border this morning and continued his journey to the capital Kyiv by car, escorted by UN security guards and Ukrainian military personnel, EFE has been able to verify.
On his trip to Kyiv, the UN chief made en route a gas station in Vog, a municipality about 150 kilometers from Lviv, and a second stop in Zhytomyr, about 140 kilometers from Kyiv.
Alongside Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Guterres will also meet with UN agency officials to discuss “how to optimize humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine,” although it has not been announced where the visit will take place for the time being. on the ground.
After Zelenskyy’s complaint about the first visit to Moscow, there was no communication between the UN and the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainian leader recalled that his country was a victim of the attack and felt it was not fair that Guterres met Putin first.
The Ocha spokesman told EFE that his trip to the two countries was “a mission of peace”. The UN is working to ensure that “the terror and horror in the bombed areas end as quickly as possible” and that “humanitarian aid reaches the people who need it”.
“There are many parts of Ukraine that we cannot reach, for example Mariupol or Kherson. It is urgent that an agreement is reached with humanitarian corridors and that people in need can be evacuated,” the spokesman added.
“The war has caused a number of deaths, displaced persons and an unimaginable level of human suffering. We have 25% of the population of Ukraine who need humanitarian aid because of the war,” Saviano Abreu added.
Under the “Moscow Accords,” he said, the United Nations is already preparing and coordinating for these evacuations and humanitarian food imports to be possible and take place as soon as possible, and he hopes they can bear fruit after the upcoming meetings take place tomorrow in Ukraine.
This is Guterres’ first trip to the two wartorn countries since midFebruary, when Russia sent troops to eastern and northern Ukraine, sparking the largest refugee movement in Europe in decades.
The UN as a whole has been questioned during the war in Ukraine for its inability to stop it or even reach a ceasefire or agreement on “humanitarian corridors”, largely due to the veto power that Russia has in the Security Council as one of its two permanent ones members.