The war in Ukraine is also being fought in the corridors of the United Nationswhere the struggle rages between Russia – discreetly supported by China – and the countries of North America and Europe, mainly, which each try on their own to carry out a resolution where their “story” of the war prevails.
Russia currently has a “humanitarian resolution” pending that it wants to present to the Security Council, while the so-called “Western” countries – even the Russians use this name – promote another, but in their case in the General Assembly, where the resolutions are not binding but cannot be vetoed by any country.
So that it does not seem to be alone, Russia has tried to find companions for its “humanitarian resolution”, but its opponents have not stood idly by: “Colleagues from other delegations tell us about unprecedented political pressure and blackmail not to co-sponsor it », said this Thursday in the Council the Russian representative, Vasili Nebenzia.
He did not mention specific countries, but he was obviously talking about the current members of the Council and that they are in a gray area, without adopting the aggressive position of the “westerners”, that is, countries like Brazil, Kenya, Gabon, Ghana or the United Arab Emirates Although they mostly condemned the invasion of Ukraine, they have subsequently limited themselves to asking for everything to be resolved through negotiation and diplomacy, without criticizing Moscow.
Since the crisis began, the European countries on the Council – the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Ireland and Albania – have shown seamless unity with the United States, and in some cases have joined Mexico, which has presented the next resolution to the Assembly jointly with France.
And meanwhile, Russia has promoted another debate today in the Council on what its ambassador called “new evidence” found by Russian soldiers on biological weapons laboratories found in Ukraine, an issue that already motivated another session of the same body just ago one week.
It is not just a question of procedures: deep down, what the story is is under discussion, because yesterday, in the Security Council, the accusations of “lies”, “misinformation” and “cynicism” flew from one side to another .
Mariupol as a symbol
The city of Mariupol, a Russian-speaking city in western Ukraine, has become the object of all controversies in this war: from the outset, it is an almost daily example of attacks against civilian facilities – the Maternity, the Theater and the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent-, attacks that have received a salvo of condemnations around the world.
Well, for the Russian ambassador to the UN, Mariupol is a symbol of disinformation, “the object of all lies”, because according to him his country has not attacked any of these three targets: in the Maternity -he maintained- a bomb that the Ukrainians had hidden inside, and assured that the imam of the mosque also denied the attack.
Regarding the theater, Nebenzia returned to one of the most repeated arguments by Russia: the far-right Azov Battalion had entrenched itself inside, with civilians, and “was preparing a bloody act inside the theater” so that it could be blamed on the Russians.
However, he did not provide evidence to support his claims.
He went even further: he said that in that city, civilians only want to be evacuated to Russia, and his country has in fact facilitated the evacuation of 30,000 of them, but cannot remove more because “the Nazis use them as human shields” . According to Nebenzia, 250,000 Ukrainians have asked to travel to Russia on a special telephone line made available by Moscow, “but Ukraine does not allow it.”
The crossing of accusations between Russia and the United States is sometimes suspiciously similar: yesterday, US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield claimed that Russian troops had fired on civilians queuing for food; minutes later, her colleague Nebenzia replied saying that the Ukrainians had fired on a convoy of civilians fleeing towards Russia.
And so, the UN has become a sounding board where the two parties repeat a dialogue of the deaf, with a Security Council paralyzed by the veto tool and a Secretary General who tries as best he can to find a worthy role in the situation most serious of his mandate.