The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, met this Thursday with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit that was held this week in the Russian city of Kazan. The Kremlin announced the meeting around 9:30 p.m. (Spanish time) and published a video in which both greet each other with a handshake.
It is the first time Guterres and Putin have seen each other in more than two years. The last time was in April 2022, two months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The meeting has raised blisters in kyiv, which has expressed its discomfort at the attendance of the UN chief at the Kazan summit and his face to face with the Russian president, whose arrest has been requested by the International Criminal Court, accused of war crimes. .
As Guterres’ spokesman explained at the beginning of the week, the latter plans to reiterate to Putin in their meeting “his well-known position on the war in Ukraine and the conditions for a just peace based on the founding charter of the UN and the resolutions.” The founding international treaty of the UN enshrines respect for the territorial integrity and political independence of States and, during these two and a half years, Guterres has repeatedly condemned the Russian invasion as a violation of it.
Also, the UN Secretary General, according to his spokesperson, “will continue to strive to restore safe navigation in the Black Sea, which is critically important for global food and energy security, especially for the most vulnerable countries in the world,” after after Moscow pulled out last year from the agreement that allowed millions of metric tons of grain to be shipped from Ukrainian ports.
Earlier this Thursday, when speaking at the meeting of the BRICS group with countries of the Global South, Guterres reiterated his call for peace in Ukraine: “A just peace in line with the United Nations Charter, international law and resolutions of the General Assembly.”
Also, the UN chief has called for a settlement in Sudan and peace in the Gaza Strip, where he has advocated for an “immediate ceasefire”; Lebanon and Ukraine. “We need peace everywhere. We need peace in Gaza with an immediate ceasefire and an immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages,” he said during the meeting held in the Russian city of Kazan. He has also considered necessary the “effective” distribution of humanitarian aid and making “irreversible” progress to “end the Israeli occupation” and implement the two-state solution. “We need peace in Lebanon with an immediate cessation of hostilities, moving forward in the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1701,” he added.
The UN Secretary General also recalled the four challenges that the Future Summit marked in the areas of finance, climate, technology and peace. “A community of nations is needed, working as a global family, to address global challenges,” he said at the beginning of his speech.
According to the EFE Agency, the Russian president has replied to Guterres that in well-to-do families there are also scandals and even “fights”, alluding to the current antagonism between Russia and the West. “The esteemed general secretary said that all of us must live as one big family. This is how we live. Unfortunately, separations, scandals and division of assets often take place in families,” Putin said at the end of Guterres’ speech at the BRICS group meeting.
With a half smile, Putin added: “Sometimes things even end in a fight.” In this sense, he stated that the BRICS have set themselves the goal of creating “a favorable atmosphere in the common home.” “We are and will be dedicated to these, including in coordination with the United Nations,” he noted.
Guterres’ visit angers Ukraine
Guterres’ visit to Russia has outraged kyiv. The Ukrainian Government has criticized the UN Secretary General for agreeing to meet with Putin, after in June he ruled out attending the peace conference held in Switzerland – organized by the country invaded last June – and attended by numerous international leaders. . “Instead, accept the invitation to Kazan from the war criminal Putin,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on social media.
The meeting with the head of the Kremlin has been “one of the main reasons for his attendance” in Kazan, according to the secretary general’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq. Haq argued that Guterres has attended the summit “as he previously did at (the group’s previous summit in) South Africa, as has always been his custom when attending meetings of organizations with a large number of important member states, such as the G7 or the G20.” The spokesperson highlighted that the countries of the BRICS group “represent almost half of humanity” and, therefore, the summit was “of great importance for the UN’s work with member countries.”
“With regard to Ukraine and visits to this country, the Secretary General is looking forward to visiting Ukraine at a time convenient to both parties, as previously agreed with the President [Volodímir] Zelensky in September, when they met,” he continued.
The BRICS group, initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has expanded to nine members with the integration of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates and seeks to become a powerful counterweight to the West.
The final declaration of the Kazan summit, published this Wednesday, emphasizes that “all States must act consistently with the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations in their entirety and interrelation” and takes note “with appreciation of the “pertinent proposals for mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.”
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry considers that the document does not include “the Russian neo-imperialist vision of changing the world order and the global security architecture through its aggression against Ukraine.” “Moscow’s attempts to impose the idea of a supposed alternative position of the so-called Global South on Russian aggression against Ukraine has failed again,” continues the official note from kyiv, which also states that “the declaration demonstrates that the BRICS as an association they do not have a single position” on the war.
“We are convinced that this is due to the support of the vast majority of these countries for the objectives and principles of the UN, as also mentioned in the declaration,” says the kyiv statement, which recalls that one of these principles is respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries that Russia violates in Ukraine. According to the note from Ukrainian diplomacy, this support for the UN Charter “is incompatible with supporting aggression or changing borders by force” and “therefore with supporting Russia and its war of aggression against Ukraine.”
In one of their most notable positions, the countries participating in the BRICS summit have condemned the sanctions imposed without the approval of the UN on countries such as Russia or Iran.
For now, kyiv and Ukraine’s positions appear to remain distant and there is no indication that they are willing to engage in broader peace talks to end the conflict. Zelensky is trying to step on the accelerator to obtain support for what he has dubbed the “plan for victory,” with which he seeks to pressure his allies to “strengthen” their position, militarily and diplomatically, in the face of eventual negotiations with Moscow. but even Now the proposal has been received lukewarmly by Western partners.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military defense intelligence service has said that North Korean military units have left Russian training camps and entered the combat zone between Russian and Ukrainian forces for the first time. Specifically, Ukrainian spies have searched troops in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion last August.
In response to accusations about the deployment of North Korean soldiers, Putin has assured that his country and North Korea will decide how and when to apply the article of mutual military assistance in case of aggression included in the association treaty signed by both countries. When a journalist asked him about the existence of satellite images that apparently show North Korean troop movements, Putin responded: “The images are serious. If there are, it means that there is something.”
The Pentagon said this Wednesday for the first time that it was aware of the presence of North Korean troops in Russian territory, while the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) estimated the number of soldiers already sent by Pyongyang to the Russian Federation at around 3,000.
With information from EFE.
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