Text message conversation between a Russian soldier and his mother shocks the United Nations
Save Ukraine. Save the UN. Save democracy. Neither more nor less that is what the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN asked the General Assembly on Monday, which met in emergency session for the first time since 1982, when Israel annexed the Syrian territories of the Golan Heights. The meeting itself responded to the failure of the organization to respond to the Ukrainian crisis from the Security Council, the body with coercive power created to be the police of world peace. The only one who could have imposed the resolution that could not be approved on Friday due to the Russian veto.
Fate has wanted the aggressor country to be the rotating president of the Security Council during the month of February, followed by the United Arab Emirates in March. To respond to this “1939 moment”, several ambassadors were stoned, only the General Assembly remained, the most democratic organ of the UN, in which its 197 members participate, but which lacks the teeth to impose its resolutions.
It did serve, yes, as a platform to approve a political declaration that leaves a record for the history of the world’s unity against Putin’s imperialist aggression. An international megaphone from which to demand that he withdraw the troops “without conditions”, demanded the ambassador of the European Union, Olof Skoog.
The Ukrainian government, which has known how to maximize media attention and even social networks, thus had another opportunity to touch the hearts of the world. The conversation by text message that his representative read between a Russian soldier (anonymous) and his mother, shortly before he died, summarized the drama of the war and dismantled with a stroke of the pen the Russian propaganda that plagues the networks social.
«How are you son, why do you take so long to answer the messages? Are you really in training maneuvers? Dad wants to know if we sent you a package. The boy’s frustration was evident. «What are you talking about, mom, how are you going to send me a package? I am no longer in Crimea, here is a real war in full swing. I’m afraid we are bombing all cities, including civilian targets. They told us that they would welcome us with open arms and they throw themselves under the armored vehicles so that we don’t get through. They call us fascists, mom. This is so hard!”
Expelled
The unknown soldier may or may not have existed, but for one day he managed to win the media war. He would be one of “more than 3,000 Russian soldiers who have died in this invasion,” according to the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergii Kislitsia.
At that time the Russian ambassador, Vasili Nebenzya, was confronting the UN journalists defending his country’s “special military operation”, which according to his version does not affect civilians, although the UN estimates that the explosions “verified” against Residential buildings have left at least a hundred dead, including seven children, and the true figure may be much higher because counting is difficult in the heat of battle.
In the middle of a press conference, he answered a phone call in which he learned that the United States had just declared him and a dozen Russian diplomats ‘persona non grata’, demanding that they leave the country within a week, in breach of diplomatic agreements with the UN. “They have arrived at the embassy and they have given us the notice,” he said.
The world has decided that the prospect of a Third World War, with the nuclear threat that Putin wields, requires an exceptionally strong response before it is too late. The bombing of Ukraine has already spat out more than half a million refugees from all sides in just five days, which has unleashed a real humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe, according to UN accounts. France and Mexico have promoted a new resolution before the Security Council to request the protection of civilians and access to humanitarian services.
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