New York, 5 May 2022
May I start by congratulating the UK presidency for their excellent stewardship of the Council during the month of April and wish you, Mme. President and dear Linda, as well as the US team, the very best for this month.
I thank the Secretary General for his remarks, for his clear positioning in upholding the international law and even more so for his efforts to negotiate a safe passage for civilians in Mariupol, during the recent visit to Russia and Ukraine. We all must be proud of what the UN system is doing to help Ukraine and its people.
I would also like to thank USG Griffiths, High Commissioner Bachelet and Ms. Luzan for their important and updated, yet sobering information.
Mme. President
The absurd, unprovoked, unjustified, and still-going-on war of choice of Russia in Ukraine is in its third month.
While Russia continues to be immured in total denial, the world continues to witness a never-ending human tragedy.
Despite worldwide calls, there is no end in sight. Calls for a humanitarian pause during Orthodox Easter went unheeded. The war continues to inflict undue pain on Ukraine and its people. Indiscriminate shelling and bombing of populated areas, the killing of civilians, and attacks on health facilities, schools and civilian infrastructure continue.
Extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and rape, actions that may amount to war crimes have been documented.
Eastern and southern parts of Ukraine are now facing severe consequences, while airstrikes continue in multiple areas in Ukraine, causing additional damages and civilian losses. Every time we meet, there are new reports of casualties, news of more atrocities uncovered, and more destruction inflicted. Just like that apartment block hit in Odessa, killing 8 civilians including a three-months old baby, or those dreadful accounts just mentioned by High Commissioner Bachelet.
But Russia’s actions are not only limited to Ukraine only. More than 5 million people have been forced to cross the borders. No one could have imagined how quickly the world’s breadbasket could go from wheat fields to battlefields.
Global hunger is soaring to alarming levels, exacerbated like never before by this war that is destroying a country, that is aggressing developing countries, and is challenging the entire world.
Dear colleagues,
1200 bodies have been discovered so far around Kyiv, and almost all civilians, killed by a bullet in the head. You remember: Kremlin considered Ukrainians as brothers and yet is killing them. When you kill your family, you are a monster. Solders have tortured, raped, and murdered only to be honored for their bravery. They should be called to account not celebrated.
As Russia stalls and keeps redrawing its strategy, all indicates that disabused commanders have abandoned military doctrine and, to prove any form of success, are flattening cities and terrorizing civilians.
This is the victory à la Russe. When you cannot prevail on the battlefield, you resort to atrocities. A terrible match of incompetence with brutality. This is a cruel reality and a dreadful prospect.
Mme. President,
The more Russia struggles in front of Ukraine’s resistance, the more Kremlin’s rhetoric continues to escalate into the madman’s ideas of nuclear war. Nuclear saber-rattling is ignominious.
Once it was the president himself, then another high official, then the unstoppable propaganda machine.
What is the purpose of showing a nuclear weapon that could trigger a tsunami strong enough to flood the whole UK? What is the logic of staging a nuclear explosion in the heart of Ireland?
There could not be a more striking contrast between dreams and projects of science for conquering space and extending human civilization beyond the planet and the archaic and rotted rhetoric on the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, of annihilation of civilization because of the war of choice that is being lost.
Leon Trotsky has written that “the army is a copy of society and suffers from all its diseases, usually at a higher temperature”.
This is why truth is critical so that the domestic and international opinion does not fall for the propaganda and the conspiracy theories vehiculated relentlessly from a black hole from where only darkness is escaping.
Let’s recall that only yesterday we celebrated World Press Freedom Day. I would like to pay tribute to all the brave journalists that are risking their lives to tell the truth, to keep the world informed about the war in Ukraine.
Russian citizens must learn that this war is not glorifying their country; it has isolated it like never before. It is not making it more prosper; to the contrary, it is vertiginously spiraling it down. It is not transporting it to modernity but rather dragging it into a revolved past.
No one wants to destroy Russia; no one wants to cancel Russia. If Kremlin has made bad choices and has taken wrong decisions, they can correct the course, meaning: Stop the war, recall troops back home, choose reason, return to diplomacy, and respect their neighbor, and let that big Ukraine heart beat in freedom. This is what is needed. The keyword here is “Mir”.
Mme. President,
After several failed attempts, safe passage was arduously secured for a number of civilians in Mariupol’s steel facility, which as we heard are underway. This is a testimony – a welcome but a meagre one comparing the scale of tragedy in Ukraine – that diplomacy can work but there must be a clear will.
Those lucky ones that would see the sun again after weeks in the underground to escape relentless shelling tell that before being escorted to non-occupied parts of Ukraine, they had been interrogated by FSB agents seeking information on the tunnels of Azovstal steel complex with a view to locating Ukrainians soldiers still in the only part of Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces.
And, occupied means destroyed. Only two months ago, Mariupol was a thriving city, with almost half a million inhabitants.
The scorched-earth strategy applied by Russia has made it the catacomb of Ukraine.
Mme. President,
We know now the main mantra of the pretext of the war: invasion of Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country. Despite the fact that the first citizen, the president of Ukraine is Jewish. Yet, the theory has been further elaborated.
Pretending that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews, that Hitler had Jewish blood, which underlines a theory that Jews inflicted the holocaust to themselves just like the Ukrainians are supposedly slaughtering their people and destroying their own country, is not black humor; it is not one of those basic fake-news you easily discard as rubbish. This is part of the worst conspiracy theory warfare. When you have the top diplomat dwell on such disgracefulness, this is a terrible low coming from a dangerous high.
Mme President,
We are not in the business of competition who speaks more or louder; we are here to try to stop this war, to stop those crimes, protect civilians and to make sure that the perpetrators do not have a place in our world, but only in theirs: the one where they pay for their deeds through accountability.
We commend the huge efforts of the EU to respond to the massive increase in humanitarian needs, in providing military, financial, and support for the reconstruction. We welcome the High-Level International Donors’ Conference for Ukraine held today in Warsaw. Albania was part of it.
Mme President,
The SG was received in Moscow for uneasy talks with authorities. He visited Kyiv as well.
As appalling and as shameful as it may be, Kyiv was shelled during his visit and while he was speaking.
Rarely have we witnessed such a degree of disregard for the UN and its Secretary-General, such contempt for the Organization and the entire UN personnel.
I don’t know how the Russians explain this, unless in the very same way as for everything else: the Ukrainians did it.
Let me end with this note: We should strongly reject any idea of territorial division of Ukraine imposed by force, as a result of aggression.
We have mentioned it before and we reiterate it now: the creation of artificial entities, either by occupation or by proxies, is unacceptable.
That should not be accepted in Ukraine or anywhere else.