UN secretary-general says Ukraine war is ‘unwinnable’

Ukraine cannot be conquered”House for house”, warned the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, who called for the fighting to stop and for it to happen “a chance at peace”.

“This war is unwinnable.” he maintained in statements to journalists made at the headquarters of the world body in New York, for which “sooner or later, you will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table”.

“It is time to stop this senseless war, the bombing of hospitals, schools, residential buildings and shelters”, he pointed out and warned that “Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house”, in the image of the city of Mariupol, which has been bombed and largely destroyed by Russian forces.

Guterres considered that the war that broke out with the invasion of Ukraine launched by Russia on February 24 last, “It’s going nowhere, fast.”

Besides of “hell” that the Ukrainians are experiencing – 10 million people have been displaced in less than a month of conflict- “reverberations are being felt around the world with skyrocketing food, energy and fertilizer prices threatening to unleash a global hunger crisis”, he warned.

A group of countries has called for this Wednesday a special meeting of the UN General Assembly, the 11th since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24 last. It is expected that a new resolution on the “humanitarian consequences of the aggression” to Ukraine, proposed by Mexico and France and which so far has 66 co-sponsors.

On March 2, in a historic decision, 141 countries voted in favor of another resolution condemning the Russian invasion against 35 abstentions (including China, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan , or Pakistan) and five votes against (North Korea, Syria, Belarus, Eritrea and Russia itself).

The current project of Mexico and France is opposed by Russia and several of its allies, who do not want the name of the country to appear in the text, alleging that this would “politicizes”.

South Africa, which abstained in the vote on March 2, has tabled an alternative draft resolution, in which Russia is not mentioned.

According to diplomats consulted by AFP, the South African text is “very similar to a text” that Russia intends to put to a vote, also on Wednesday, at a parallel meeting of the Security Council, where it has the right to veto.

Given the lack of support, Russia had given up last week on several occasions to put it to a vote.

A European diplomat, who requested anonymity, declared on Monday that it is necessary “isolate russia” and that countries like “China” I know “distance” from Moscow.