The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, arrived in kyiv this Wednesday on a peace mission to meet on Thursday with President Volodimir Zelenski, after visiting Russia, “for a logistical issue”, despite the fact that the order of the visits was not to the liking of the Ukrainian president.
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“The order of the visits was a logistical issue. The letters were sent to the two Governments from New York; Russia responded before and when those from Ukraine arrived, this visit was scheduled”, he explained to Eph Saviano Andreu, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the humanitarian arm of the UN.
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Guterres entered Ukraine on Wednesday morning through the Polish border and continued his journey to the capital, kyiv, by car, escorted by UN security and the Ukrainian military, as Efe was able to verify.
On his car ride to kyiv, the top leader of the United Nations made a stop along the way at a gas station in Woga municipality located about 150 kilometers from Lviv, as well as a second in Zhytomyr, about 140 kilometers from kyiv.
António Guterres will not only see President Zelensky and his Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba but also will meet with the staff of UN agencies to discuss “how to optimize humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine“, although for the moment it has not been revealed which place he will visit on the ground.
There has been no communication between the UN and the Ukrainian government following Zelensky’s complaint that the UN chief executive visited Moscow first.
The head of the Ukrainian government recalled that it was his country that was receiving the attack and considered that it was not fair for Guterres to meet Putin first. The OCHA spokesman explained to Efe that his trip to the two countries is “a peace mission.”
There are many parts of Ukraine that we cannot reach, for example Mariupol, or Kherson.
The UN, he said, is working so that “the terror and horror in the areas that are being bombed end as soon as possible” and so that “humanitarian aid can reach the people who need it.”
“It is urgent that an agreement be reached with humanitarian corridors and that the people who need it can be evacuated,” added the spokesman for the UN humanitarian branch.
“The war has caused a number of deaths, displacement and an unimaginable level of human suffering. We have 25 percent of the population of Ukraine that needs humanitarian aid because of the warSaviano Abreu added.
As he said, after the “Moscow agreements”, the UN is already preparing and coordinating so that these evacuations and the entry of humanitarian food are possible and take place as soon as possible, and he has hoped that they can bear fruit after the meetings that will take place tomorrow in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that the situation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, brutally besieged for weeks by the Russian Army, is “tragic.”
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.
This is the first trip Guterres has made to the two countries immersed in a war since mid-February.when Russia launched its troops against eastern and northern Ukraine, triggering the largest movement of refugees in Europe for several decades.
The UN as a whole has been called into question during the Ukraine war for its inability to stop it or even achieve a truce or an agreement for “humanitarian corridors”, mainly due to the veto power that Russia has in the Security Council as one of the of its permanent members.
EFE
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