Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global food crisis are expected to be the main common issues raised by leaders during this Tuesday’s (20) UN General Assembly discussion. 193 executives are expected to attend the meeting.
The meeting must have no impact on the war.
“It would be naïve to think that we are close to the possibility of a peace agreement,” said UN SecretaryGeneral Di Antonio Guterres.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda ThomasGreenfield said other countries have expressed concern that Americans are not paying attention to what is happening in other crises around the world while we focus on Ukraine . “That’s not the case,” she said.
UN General Assembly and the expectation for the speech of the President of Ukraine
Biden only on Wednesday
The order of speeches is generally as follows:
- UN Secretary General
- Brazilian President
- American President
However, this time US President Joe Biden will not give his speech until Wednesday (21st), as he traveled to London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Guterres said the geopolitical divide (between the US and Western countries on the one hand and Russia on the other) is the most significant since the Cold War. He warned that this is crippling the global response to the dramatic challenges we face, such as war, climate change, poverty, hunger and inequality.
Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of grain and fertilizers.
The UN blames the war for exacerbating the food crisis that already existed because of climate change and the Covid19 pandemic.
The US is expected to host a food security summit with the European Union and African Union on the sidelines of the UN meeting, along with a ministerial meeting on the global COVID19 action plan and a replenishment conference for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Most UN countries condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, his US counterpart Antony Blinken and French President Emmanuel Macron have visited African states in recent months in a bid for influence. Africa has been hit by a famine that is expected to be declared in Somalia in the coming months.
Macron intends to use his twoday visit to New York to put pressure on countries that remained neutral in the war to try to bring them to the West, French officials said. The focus is on India, the Gulf States, Africa and some Latin American countries. .
Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy
China is Russia’s most important strategic partner. The country stands “against the wall”: it criticizes the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West, but it supports neither the invasion nor the war.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said China’s President Xi Jinping privately said he had concerns about Ukraine.
Neither Xi nor Putin will attend: they sent their foreign ministers to the event.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, will appear in prerecorded video the UN allowed him to present himself this way on Friday. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is expected (on Thursday he will take part in a meeting with the foreign ministers of Russia, the USA and China in New York).