Two years after the start of the war in Ukraine, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an end to the fighting. “The time has come for peace – a just peace based on the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the resolutions of the General Assembly,” Guterres told the UN Security Council in New York yesterday. The 74-year-old Portuguese also warned of an expansion of the conflict in Eastern Europe.
Numerous war crimes, especially those committed by the Russian armed forces, must be investigated and those responsible must be held accountable. “Many Ukrainians are living the nightmare of losing their children,” continued Guterres. All displaced children – some of whom were brought to Russia – would have to be reunited with their families.
Verbal exchange of blows in the Security Council
24 months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the UN's most powerful body met yesterday for a high-level meeting, during which representatives of Russia and Ukraine traded verbal jabs.
“Russia’s goal is to destroy Ukraine, and they talk about it openly,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said yesterday at the UN General Assembly in New York. “The truth is that there are no temporarily occupied areas in Ukraine,” replied Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya.
The Crimean peninsula is Russian and there were referendums on annexation to Russia in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and around Kherson, the ambassador tried to justify the events that violated international law. Nebensja did not mention that the aforementioned areas were conquered with brutal military force in the period leading up to these “referendums”. Instead, he once again attacked the Ukrainian government with the familiar Russian propaganda accusation of being a “neo-Nazi regime.”
“The only reason for this war is and remains Russia's refusal to recognize Ukraine's right to exist,” Kuleba stressed earlier.