António Guterres at the UN: "The war in Ukraine is an affront to the global collective conscience"

The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, speaks at the special session of the General Assembly, this Wednesday in New York. JUSTIN LANE (EFE)

The UN General Assembly held this Thursday a special session on the war in Ukraine in which the mobilization of the European Union stands out, with the presence of 25 foreign ministers from the bloc and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, who will also speak on Friday at the Security Council meeting on the conflict.

While in New York the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, described the war as an "affront to the global collective conscience", China presented in Moscow its vision for a "political settlement", a hypothetical alternative, ventures into the UN, to the majority resolution in favor of a "global, just and lasting" peace that will be voted on Thursday, at the end of the extraordinary session.

To the also special meeting of the Security Council, on Friday,

“The invasion is an affront to our collective conscience;

a violation of the United Nations charter and international law with dramatic humanitarian and human rights consequences.

The impact is felt beyond Ukraine”, Guterres said at the beginning of the session, which will continue tomorrow.

"The [UN's] charter leaves no room for doubt: all members must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any State."

After Guterres, Dmytro Kuleba, Foreign Minister of Ukraine, took the floor, who recalled his speech in this very rostrum on the eve of the invasion.

“A year ago, I spoke here, 24 hours before the first Russian bombardment of my country, in the early morning [of February 24].

Since then, Ukraine has exercised its right to defend itself, but Russia continues to seek the destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign nation.

We have never wanted war, ”he stressed.

No peace plan should cross the "red lines" of kyiv, he warned, that is, the alleged territorial concessions to Russia in the east of the country and in Crimea.

“For Ukraine, the red lines are the principles of the UN charter, including respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

There will not be any kind of marketing on Ukrainian territories, President [Volodimir] Zelensky has made it clear," Kuleba warned.

Zelenski presented a ten-point peace plan in November, with the red lines well marked, although the text of the Assembly resolution does not make any reference to it in order to reach a greater consensus.

On behalf of Russia, Vasili Nebenzia, its ambassador to the UN, has intervened, who denounced that the West has finally removed "the mask" to reveal its attempt at hegemony over the world.

“The West is ready to drag the entire world into the abyss of war in order to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” said the diplomat, on his

day at the UN, of his predecessor, the current Kremlin foreign minister, Sergei. Lavrov.

Nebenzia explained that the West, "the sum of the US, the EU and NATO, sees the world as if it were their property."

His words were refuted point by point by Borrell, pointing out that the war in Ukraine is not a war between the West and Russia, since it affects "the north, the south, the East and the West."

The head of European diplomacy warned of the risk of an extension of the conflict.

"If we do not condemn Russia's actions in Ukraine today, the risks for another country, in another part of the world, of suffering a similar aggression are increased."

Regarding the text of the resolution, he indicated that it has incorporated numerous amendments to gain support, but also non-negotiable principles, such as the cessation of hostilities by Russia and "the withdrawal of all its forces and military equipment from Ukraine, immediately, complete and unconditional”.

Along the same lines as Borrell, the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares,

The word negotiation is no longer taboo, not only on the global diplomatic scene, and the 68 countries, including Spain, which until today sponsored the draft resolution are committed to that path, in addition to reminding the Kremlin that any compromise excludes conquest by foreign territory force.

Given the operational blockade of the Security Council, the only one capable of formulating executive resolutions, due to Russia's right of veto, the General Assembly, the plenary of the 193 countries that make up the organization, has become the only instance with a voice and vote -even symbolic- in the conflict.

During these months, not a single executive resolution on the war has been approved due to the Russian veto.

The Assembly resolution includes a call for the "cessation of hostilities", followed by negotiations between the parties under the guiding principle of the United Nations charter and the territorial integrity of States, with the subsequent withdrawal of Russian troops from territory. from Ukraine.

The two-page text of the resolution has the support of practically all Western countries, which aspire to drag the so-called global south, also a victim of the conflict due to derivatives such as the food security crisis due to the shortage of cereals , or energy.

The large number of participants -more than 60 countries had asked for the floor this Wednesday, in five-minute interventions, plus another 20 on Thursday-, as well as the presentation of two amendments by Belarus, a traditional satellite of Moscow, has significantly delayed the order of the day

All in all, the big unknown will be whether the Western bloc's resolution will achieve support greater than the 143 votes that in October condemned, in this same forum, the Russian attempt to annex parts of Ukraine after four illegal referendums were held in the This, specifically in Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk.

That was the greatest diplomatic triumph of the Western bloc -with the EU, the US, Canada, Japan and Australia in the lead- against the pyrrhic support garnered by Russia, which only achieved the support of four countries (Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua and Syria), against 35 abstentions, at the head of all of them that of China, as well as a large part of the African continent.

The two amendments presented this Wednesday by Belarus have been a compromise that has only added delay to the call.

The role of China and its supposed peace plan is the other unknown in a meeting marked by a date as round as the anniversary of the war.

Throughout this year, Beijing has oscillated between understanding Russia's arguments and formal, technical neutrality, as shown by its abstention from voting.

Details of the Chinese peace plan had not been presented to Kiev before the meeting, according to senior Ukrainian officials, despite Kuleba's meeting with his counterpart Wang Yi during the Munich Security Conference last weekend. .

With respect to the global south, especially affected by the food and energy crisis derived from the conflict, the direction of the vote of the African countries will be decisive, in which in recent years the Chinese economic influence and the Russian military presence have grown exponentially, including the Wagner mercenary group.

Whether the global south aligns itself with the western bloc or prefers to remain on the sidelines of a supposedly distant conflict will be the other thermometer of the meeting.

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