A Russia deeply enmeshed within the greatest battle in Europe since World War II dispatched its overseas minister to the United Nations Security Council on Monday to extol the virtues of peace and diplomacy. But Western diplomats immediately accused Moscow of hypocrisy.
The spectacle occurred as Russia nears the top of its one-month presidency of the Council. Intent on utilizing the platform to full benefit, its overseas minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, led an all-day session described as centered on the upkeep of the U.N. constitution, worldwide guidelines and multilateralism.
But the gathering additionally supplied Russia an opportunity to denounce its adversaries and to attempt to flip the narrative of its invasion of Ukraine, casting the West because the true aggressor.
“Nobody allowed the Western minority to speak for all of humankind,” Mr. Lavrov stated on the Council. “They need to be polite and respect all members of the international community.”
For all of the theater — the United States and European members of the Council pointedly didn’t ship their very own overseas ministers — the session made clear the hazards going through the world.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary normal, warned that the multilateral international system was “under greater strain than at any time since the creation of the United Nations” and cautioned that the tensions between main powers elevated the danger of battle. And Mr. Lavrov himself spoke of the world being at a “possibly even more dangerous threshold” than it was in the course of the Cold War.
Even as Russian forces maintained their brutal marketing campaign to subdue Ukraine, Mr. Lavrov supplied the Council an extended, wide-ranging speech that touched on the aggressions of the West over the a long time, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the invasion of Iraq.
But Western diplomats stated the aggressor right this moment is clearly Russia.
“This illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary war runs directly counter to our most sacred principle: that a war of aggression and territorial conquest is never, ever acceptable,” stated the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield dropped at the United Nations Elizabeth Whelan, an American whose brother, Paul Whelan, is imprisoned in Russia. And she demanded the discharge of one other imprisoned American, the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Richard Gowan, the U.N. director on the International Crisis Group, a overseas coverage assume tank based mostly in Brussels, stated: “In a sense everybody got what they wanted today. Lavrov got to show that Russia’s position in the Security Council is assured. Western diplomats got to be rude to Lavrov. So that was a win-win situation for both sides.”
But the actual viewers Mr. Lavrov was attempting to achieve — and the chance supplied by the one-month Security Council presidency — could properly have lain elsewhere.
The West’s makes an attempt to punish Russia over the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine have been solely partially profitable. Many nations in Asia and Africa, nonetheless paying the value of Western colonialism, have kept away from condemning the conflict. And typically trapped between competing superpowers, they discover nice attraction within the topic of the day’s Security Council session: multilateralism.
In addition to the Council’s 15-members, greater than a dozen Asian and African nations additionally participated within the debate, calling for a extra balanced, much less polarized international order that higher upholds the targets of the United Nations.
Nepal’s ambassador, Amrit Bahadur Rai, stated that for small nations, the subject was pressing. “We expect the Council members, especially the permanent members, to work harder to reach a consensus to address the problems facing the world today,” he stated.
In welcoming Mr. Lavrov as chief of the assembly, the Chinese ambassador appeared to ship a message to the West.
“We are against the distortion by some countries of the meaning of international law and the imposition of their own will on the international community,” stated Ambassador Zhang Jun.
In an extended speech that got here earlier than Mr. Lavrov’s feedback, Mr. Guterres talked about the conflict solely as soon as.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law, is causing massive suffering and devastation to the country and its people, and adding to the global economic dislocation triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the secretary normal stated.
Mr. Guterres’s obvious circumspection urged that he didn’t need to threat alienating Mr. Lavrov forward of crucial negotiations to increase a deal that allowed badly wanted Ukrainian grain trapped by the conflict to be shipped once more. The grain deal is about to run out on May 18, and the United Nations is anxious that its collapses would have dire penalties on international meals safety.
Mr. Lavrov held a one-on-one assembly with Mr. Guterres on Monday afternoon the place the 2 males mentioned the conflict in Ukraine, the grain deal, and the conditions in Afghanistan and Syria, in line with a U.N. readout of the assembly.
The presidency of the Security Council rotates between its members. Russia’s is over on the finish of the month,
The Kremlin’s adversaries couldn’t cease Russia from holding the presidency, or stop Mr. Lavrov from presiding over Monday’s session. They may solely attempt to counter Moscow’s narrative.
Before the assembly, the European Union’s ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, delivered a press release on behalf of the bloc as all its 27 ambassadors stood subsequent to him. “By organizing this debate, Russia is trying to portray itself as a defender of the U.N. Charter and multilateralism,” he stated. But, he stated, “Everywhere you look, Russia is in contempt.”
Mr. Lavrov on Tuesday will chair a Council assembly on the battle between Israel and the Palestinians.
For all of the outrage over Russia holding the presidency, the Security Council has performed business largely as regular over the previous weeks, with backdoor diplomacy and scheduled occasions going down as ever.
The Council addressed two crises this month: the abrupt conflict in Sudan and the Taliban banning ladies from working, together with for U.N. businesses.
“In both cases, Russia is not an outright spoiler,” stated Mr. Gowan, the Crisis Group analyst. “Maybe those crises have helped keep Council members in line.”
In a uncommon present of unity, Security Council members issued an official assertion condemning the combating in Sudan and calling for a direct cease-fire and return to political dialogue.
Source: www.nytimes.com