Russian leader, Vladimir Putinradically disagreed today in his assessment of the conflict in Ukraine with the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterreswho did not hesitate to call Russia’s military campaign an “invasion”, calling on it to collaborate with the international community in opening humanitarian corridors.
“It is totally evident that there are two different positions on what is happening in Ukraine,” Guterres said at a press conference.
conflicting visions
Guterres, who experienced moments of tension in his consultations with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, found that Russia defines the current conflict as “a special military operation”while, “according to the UN (…), the Russian invasion in Ukraine is a violation of the territorial integrity of a country that contradicts the UN statutes.”
A concern that deepens due to “persistent reports of violations of international humanitarian law and possible war crimes,” he said, stressing that these events “require an independent investigation.”
“We consider that the territory of Ukraine was invaded”he reiterated during his meeting with Putin in the Kremlin.
This vision was rejected by the president, who defended the legitimacy of the “special military operation” in Ukraine by appealing to the right to self-determination of peoples.
Putin cited the Kosovo precedent as an example and stressed that he had “personally read all the documents of the UN International Tribunal.”
“I perfectly remember the verdict of the International Court, which stated that a certain territory of a State is not obliged to request permission to declare its sovereignty from the central authorities of the country,” he said.
Putin’s plan: announce a victory in Donbas on the anniversary of the fall of the Nazis
For this reason, Putin assured, “if this precedent exists, the Donbas republics could also do it. For our part, we received the right to recognize them as independent states” and later give them military aid “against the state that carried out a military operation against them” since 2014.
“We had the right to do so in full correspondence with article 51 of the UN statutes,” the Russian president concluded.
Guterres proposes contact group
However, despite these deep differences, the parties also forged ties of possible contacts on Ukraine.
Guterres proposed the creation of a Contact Group with Russia and Ukraine to “search for the possibilities of opening safe humanitarian corridors with a ceasefire to ensure that they are really effective” in the areas of Ukraine affected by the fighting.
The UN secretary general acknowledged the existence of “a crisis within a crisis” in the besieged port city of Mariupol, “where hundreds of thousands of civilians require humanitarian aid, many need to be evacuated.”
He noted that currently the lack of coordination between Moscow and kyiv frustrates these initiatives.
“The UN is ready to mobilize all of its human and logistical resources to save the people in Mariupol,” he said.
A proposal that is based on “coordinating the work and efforts of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Ukraine and Russia to guarantee the safe evacuation of civilians who want to leave both the Azovstal (steel mill) and of the city in the direction they want.
The tragic Mariupol, according to Putin
Putin described the situation in this city as “difficult and even tragic”, but He insisted that the city “no longer has war actions” and Azovstal, where a thousand civilians and an undetermined number of Ukrainian combatants are refugees, “is totally isolated.”
A position that hours before he had expressed to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to whom he pointed out regarding the Ukrainian military blocked in the ruins of the industrial complex that “the kyiv authorities must assume their political responsibility and, for humanitarian reasons, give them the order to lay down arms.
Regarding the civilians who, according to the Ukrainian authorities, remain in these facilities, he assured Guterres that “the Ukrainian military is obliged to free them, because otherwise they would be acting like the terrorists of the Islamic State.”
Besides, The Russian president defended that the Russian corridors in Mariúpol “do work” and assured that they have been used by thousands of Ukrainians to leave the cityd both in the direction of Russia and towards the areas controlled by kyiv.
“You say that Russia’s humanitarian corridors do not work. Mr. Secretary General, you have been misinformed. They work,” he said, noting that between 130,000 and 140,000 civilians have left Mariupol, that “they can go wherever they want.”
Save lives and prevent famine
Although he came to Moscow with criticism, Guterres insisted that his visit is “exclusively linked to the saving of lives and the alleviation of suffering.”
That is why, he assured, “The faster peace comes, the better. This is in the interest of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world.”
Guterres, who appeared on this visit “as a messenger of peace”, pointed out that this conflict transcends Ukraine, “since echoes can be seen in other parts of the world”.
“The catastrophic acceleration in food and fuel prices that has already taken place over the past year is causing considerable suffering among hundreds of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people,” he warned. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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