Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister on Friday told sceptics who believe Ukraine can\u2019t win the war with Russia that they will be proven wrong: \u201cUkraine will win the war.\u201d Dmytro Kuleba, speaking at the United Nations on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion, urged the world\u2019s nations to stand behind Ukraine. If they do, he said, victory will come \u201csooner rather than later.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, countered by repeating Moscow\u2019s claim that it didn\u2019t start the conflict. He blamed the West for fomenting it, accused Ukraine of being a tool of Western geopolitical ambitions, and vowed that Russia\u2019s \u201cspecial military operation\u201d won\u2019t end until its goals are achieved. Those goals \u2013 stated on February 24, 2022, the day Russian troops crossed the border \u2013 include the de-militarization of Ukraine and ensuring its \u201cneutral status.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN General Assembly and the Security Council are marking the anniversary with ministerial meetings as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleads for more US military aid as Russian forces make new gains in eastern Ukraine. The General Assembly has become the most important UN body dealing with Ukraine because the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, is paralysed by Russia\u2019s veto power.<\/p>\n
Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, unlike Security Council resolutions, but they serve as a barometer of world opinion. Addressing the 193-member assembly, Kuleba recalled that over 140 nations supported resolutions backing Ukraine and calling for Russian forces to withdraw. But, he said, \u201cMoscow\u2019s aim is to destroy Ukraine and they\u2019re quite outspoken about it.\u201d He said countries now saying Ukraine should negotiate with Russia and end the war are either \u201cill-informed\u201d or didn\u2019t follow events after 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and backed an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The two countries, he said, held approximately 200 rounds of negotiations and made 20 cease-fire agreements. \u201cAll of these peace efforts ended two years ago, when Russia tore apart the Minsk process and launched its full-scale invasion,\u201d Kuleba said. \u201cWhy would anyone suggest today that following the same logic will bring us to a different result?\u201d Zelenskyy\u2019s 10-point peace plan is \u201cthe only serious peace proposal on the table\u201d, Kuleba said, calling on other countries to add their diplomatic weight to it.<\/p>\n
The plan calls for expelling Russian forces, establishing a special tribunal to prosecute alleged Russian war crimes and building a European-Atlantic security architecture with guarantees for Ukraine. When Russia invaded, diplomats and experts didn\u2019t believe Ukraine would survive. Speaking to reporters, Kuleba said he wanted to make one point clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, the same people do not believe that Ukraine can win this war,\u201d he said. \u201cThey turned wrong once, and they will turn wrong again. Ukraine survived the invasion. Ukraine will win the war. And if we act collectively and jointly this will happen sooner rather than later.\u201d Nebenzia slammed Zelenskyy\u2019s plan. \u201cIt is nothing other than an ultimatum to Russia and an attempt to lure as many countries as possible into endless meetings on this utopian project at any price possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the General Assembly, where representatives of 64 countries are scheduled to speak, there was strong support for Ukraine. Britain\u2019s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he recognized that there is a sense of fatigue with the war and a compromise might seem attractive, but he said Russian President Vladimir Putin isn\u2019t seeking compromise.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather, this is a neo-imperialist bully who believes might is right,\u201d he said. \u201cIf Putin were to eke out some kind of win, the rest of the world would suffer, too. What starts in Ukraine would not end there.\u201d Poland\u2019s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the assembly, \u201cOnly our resolve can deter the neo-imperial delusions that may arise in any part of the world.\u201d \u201cWe need to stay the course until Mr. Putin understands that the days of European imperialism are gone for good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said at Ukraine\u2019s request his government will organize a high-level peace conference by the summer. He invited all nations to attend and work \u201cto find common ground for peace\u201d based on the UN Charter, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Neither the assembly nor the council took any action to mark the anniversary. But before the council meeting, Kuleba read a statement from more than 50 countries, while surrounded by their ministers and ambassadors, condemning Russia\u2019s aggression, its \u201cflagrant violation of international law,\u201d and its attacks on civilians and the infrastructure they need to survive, \u201cwhich may constitute war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres briefed the council, saying Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine violated the UN Charter and international law and, two years later, \u201cthe war in Ukraine remains an open wound at the heart of Europe.\u201d He called the invasion \u201ca dangerous precedent\u201d, stressing that newly independent countries in Africa didn\u2019t change borders established by colonial powers \u201cwith the stroke of a pen\u201d because they knew it would open \u201ca Pandora\u2019s box.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN chief said the path to peace is respect for the UN Charter\u2019s underlying principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, warning that the war is deepening geopolitical divides.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe danger of the conflict escalating and expanding is very real,\u201d he said. China\u2019s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun, whose country is a Russian ally, said Beijing respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and all other countries, and urged stepped-up peace efforts. He also stressed that \u201cthe legitimate security concerns of all countries\u201d must be respected, and criticised NATO\u2019s eastward expansion \u2013 which Moscow has strongly opposed.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Security Council, \u201cPutin is making clear every day, every hour that he does not want to negotiate peace. He wants to complete his conquest.\u201d And US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that through all of Russia\u2019s \u201clies, Putin has tried to rewrite history, to justify the unjustifiable, to break the will of the Ukrainian people, and to break the will of the international community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister on Friday told sceptics who believe Ukraine can\u2019t win the war with Russia that they will be\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":31731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[10409,5131,2126,10411,265,10410,10408,470,344,8622,808,775,672,95,1905,989],"class_list":["post-31730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-2nd-anniversary-of-the-russia-ukraine-war","tag-aid-for-ukraine","tag-fighter-jets","tag-neo-imperialism","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-russias-un-ambassador-vassily-nebenzia","tag-ukrainian-foreign-minister-dmytro-kuleba","tag-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-un","tag-un-secretary-general-antonio-guterres","tag-unga","tag-unsc","tag-us-congress","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-weapons"],"reading_time":"5 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}