War Speeches. Russia Whitewashes Putin at the UN But They Are Not Going to End the War

Last week (April 3–9), at the UN Security Council, Russia tried to distort documented cases of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territory. At the same time, Ukraine participated in the first official meeting since 2017 of the NATO-Ukraine Commission and strengthened military cooperation with Poland. French President, Emmanuel Macron, and European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, visited China in an attempt to persuade Xi to persuade Russia to end the war. However, the "no limits" friendship of the PRC and Russia turned out to be nothing more than a rhetorical device.

Macron urged Xi to persuade Russia to end the war, and Peskov says they are ready to fight further

An important event of the past week was the visit of French President, Emmanuel Macron, and European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, to China. One of the key topics of the meeting was Russia's war against Ukraine. Emmanuel Macron urged the Chinese leader to convince Russia to end the war: "I know that I can count on you to bring Russia to its senses, and bring everyone back to the negotiating table." In comments to the media, Xi also called for talks and a political solution to the war in Ukraine, but made no specific statements.

Politico said that Xi Jinping showed no signs of changing his position on Russia's war in Ukraine after talks with the French president. The British agency Reuters posted that the Chinese leader could, presumably, persuade Macron to oppose the United States. The visit’s most positive signal was Chinese support for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as Xi Jinping's statement that the use of this type of weapon "should not be allowed." In addition, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said about another "positive element": the Chinese leader confirmed that he will talk with Vladimir Zelensky, "when the conditions and time are finalized".

It is noteworthy that the Deputy of the State Duma, Leonid Slutsky, said that allegedly "the Alliance of Russia and China are not able to shatter either Paris or Brussels." Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that "the situation does not show any prospects for a peaceful settlement," and assured that the Kremlin would continue the so-called "special operation."

Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, believes that the Russian Federation should "adopt a single scenario for the end of the war, such as the unconditional withdrawal of troops from the territory of Ukraine."

It must be highlighted that this week Beijing should be visited by the head of the EU foreign policy department, Josep Borrell, who announced his trip in September and stated that Beijing's partnership with Moscow has limits, even if the official rhetoric of both capitals claims otherwise.

In this context, the statement of the Ambassador of China to the EU, Fu Tsong, is rather interesting to see. He said that China is not on Russia's side on the war, and the statement of "no limits" friendship between China and Russia, signed on the eve of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has been misinterpreted: "No limit is nothing but rhetoric." Fu Tsong assured that China had not provided military assistance to Russia, nor recognized Moscow's efforts to annex Ukrainian territories, including Crimea and Donbas.

The diplomat added that "Beijing has not condemned the invasion because it understood Russia's claims about a defensive war against NATO encroachment, and also because his government believes that 'the root causes are more complicated' than Western leaders say."

But Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that ​​"the Kremlin is guided by the content and spirit of the contacts that took place between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in the Russian capital." Besides, as we know, economic cooperation between the Kremlin and Beijing is growing. In particular, according to Bloomberg, the Chinese yuan replaced the dollar as the largest trading currency in Russia.

At the same time, in addition to China’s rhetoric, Ukraine needs to consider others, too. On Thursday, April 6, the President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a scandalous statement. He literally offered Ukraine to cede Crimea in favor of Russia to end the war: "(Vladimir Putin) can not seize the territory of Ukraine. Maybe, we can discuss about Crimea. But the fact that he is still invading, he must think... Neither can Zelenskyy want everything... The world needs peace... We have to find a solution."

The reaction of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry to the statement of the Brazilian leader was strong. Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko said: "Ukraine does not trade its territories. There is no legal, political or moral reason why we should give up even a centimeter of Ukrainian land."

In addition, Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized in his address: "The world should know: respect and order will return to international relations only when the Ukrainian flag returns to Crimea, when there is freedom – just as everywhere in Ukraine."

At the end of January, the President of Brazil proposed to create a group of countries that are strong and respectable enough to sit at the negotiating table with both sides of the war. This initiative, in particular, was criticized by the White House.

However, the relations of Ukraine with the countries of Latin America certainly need to be expanded. A few weeks ago, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with the President of Chile, and on April 5 he made an address via videoconference to the Parliament of this country.

The President of Ukraine called the Russian invasion "fascism of the XXI century" and urged to support the efforts of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest Vladimir Putin "in the case of forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and attempts to destroy their identity through assimilation and illegal adoption."

Vladimir Putin himself continues to dream of greatness. On April 5, during the reception of credentials from newly arrived ambassadors of foreign states, the dictator said that Russia wants to continue "to fulfill the historically developed mission of maintaining the global balance and building a multipolar international system."

Russia tries to justify Putin and Lvova-Belova through the UN Security Council

Russia's turn to preside the UN Security Council, the body responsible for international peace, came on April 1, 2023. On the eve, OPORA spoke in detail about the consequences of the aggressor's presidency in the Security Council, such as now Russia has the authority to define the agenda of the meetings.

As soon as at a press conference on the beginning of Russia's presidency in the UN, the country's permanent representative Vassily Nebenzia said that the agenda for April had been adopted.

"No official official Council meetings are planned for the first week of our Presidency. Still, at 10:00 am on 5 April, we intend to host in our national capacity an Arria-formula meeting (an informal meeting for the exchange of views – ed.) entitled "Children and Armed Conflict: Ukrainian Crisis. Evacuating children from conflict zones"," he said.

The hasty convening of a meeting of the UN Security Council may be related to the warrant of the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Human Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, regarding the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territory. At the press conference, Nebenzia said that Russia wants to dispel some "misgivings and propaganda" over that issue.

However, the dispelling of accusations was reduced to established Russian narratives and techniques of "whataboutism" (tactics of discrediting the opponent’s reasoning – ed.). In particular, Vassily Nebenzia accused the Kyiv regime, which came to power through an unconstitutional coup, of killing Donbas children.

"At the beginning of 2022, having received a carte blanche from the West, V.Zelensky started his forceful "conquest" of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens,"   Nebenzia said, "In order to save people's lives and protect children, the authorities of the LPR and the DPR made a decision to evacuate peaceful citizens."

The politician called the use of the topic of abducted children another element of the anti-Russian information war, and accused Kyiv of forcefully separating children from their living parents near the combat zone and torturing minors for spreading information about the deployment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The West is allegedly guilty of trying to shift the focus of attention from the evil of Nazism in Ukraine.

In addition, Nebenzia said that in Europe, children are taken away from the families of Ukrainian refugees – allegedly only in Germany, children were taken away from 80 Ukrainian families. At the end of his speech, he again stressed that Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute, therefore, any documents stemming from the International Criminal Court are considered null and void.

"For Russia, this body has disappeared from the map of international judiciary bodies. It has completely turned into a meek instrument in the hands of Western states," he said.

Moreover, Russia invited to speak at the meeting the Commissioner of the President of the Russian Federation on the rights of the child, Maria Lvova-Belova, suspected of committing war crimes. However, such attempts by Russia to justify crimes against Ukrainian children, abusing the presidency of the UN Security Council, caused sharp criticism of the international community.

More than 50 countries, as well as the European Union, issued a joint statement in response to the meeting organized by Russia. "No amount of disinformation spread by the Russian Federation can deny the truth of the matter, nor shield individuals from accountability for these crimes," the statement said.

The United Kingdom and the United States also blocked the broadcast of this meeting on the UN website. The British mission to the UN said: "If Maria Lvova-Belova wants to talk about her actions, she can do it in The Hague." At the meeting, the United Kingdom drew attention to the information of the UN Commission of Inquiry in Ukraine that none of the transfers of children to Russia they verified met the requirements of international humanitarian law.

Last week, it was also informed that Russia did not allow a 17-year-old Ukrainian young man, Bohdan Yermokhin, who was deported from occupied Mariupol, to return to his homeland. The boy was stopped at the border with Belarus and returned back to Russia. Lvova-Belova called Yermokhin "pro-Russian" and said that "Ukrainian curators" wrote to the boy with a proposal to record a video about how bad he felt in Russia.

And yet the Russian side will not be able to hide the crimes against Ukrainian children behind a bunch of misinformation. On April 4, the UN extended for one year the mandate of the commission, which documents the war crimes of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. It was the UN investigative commission that confirmed that Russian officials had taken legal and political measures to deport Ukrainian children to the Russian Federation. Thus, according to official data alone, almost 20,000 children had been forcibly taken by the Russian military from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, separated from their parents and forcibly transferred to Russian families.

However, the absurd presidency of the aggressor in the UN security body remains on the media agenda. The US CBS News says that the United States had warned that Russia's presidency will provide Vladimir Putin's regime with a platform to spread disinformation at a key point in its war against civilians in Ukraine. In fact, Russia began to do this from the first days of its presidency, announcing the arrival in New York of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, – obviously to strengthen the Kremlin's disinformation policy.

A step towards NATO and strengthening military cooperation with Poland

On April 3–4, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, paid a working visit to Brussels, where he took part in the official meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC). This is the first meeting of the commission at the level of foreign ministers attended by Ukraine since 2017. The meetings were blocked by Hungary who did not like the Ukrainian law on education, in particular the provision on compulsory education in the national language. This, according to Budapest, violates the rights of the Hungarian minority living in Ukraine.

However, NATO managed to bypass the Hungarian veto without departing from the principle of decision-making by consensus. Serhiy Sydorenko, editor of European Pravda, writes that in order to prevent Budapest from blocking the NUC meeting, this item on the agenda was simply not put to discussion and vote. Moreover, the Secretary General invited the member states of the Alliance to approve the agenda as a whole. And if Hungary decided to block it for the sake of disrupting the Ukrainian issue, it would mean that they vote against the entire ministerial meeting scheduled for April 4–5.

During the meeting, NATO foreign ministers officially supported the development of a multi-year program that will help Ukraine get closer to NATO and support it after the war with Russia. According to the Secretary General of the organization, Jens Stoltenberg, this step demonstrates "the long-term commitment of the Alliance to Ukraine and brings Ukraine closer to the Euro-Atlantic family."

At the same time, Dmytro Kuleba explained that the new program of support for Ukraine can not be a substitute for membership in the Alliance, nor a condition for membership. "This is a mechanism of practical assistance, which NATO wants to make as powerful as possible, and in parallel there is a process of making political decisions on Ukraine's membership in NATO," he said.

The Minister also underscored that at the NATO summit in Vilnius, which will be held in July 2023, Ukraine clearly expects formalized decisions. "These should be decisions that bring Ukraine closer to NATO membership. We are not looking for solutions that only state the status quo of the relations. Repeating the statement that NATO's door remains open will not be enough," he added.

On April 4, Finland became the 31st member of NATO. After that, Russia, who on the eve of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine demanded that the Alliance return to the borders of 1997, and wanted to stop the further expansion of NATO to the East, commented that the situation with Finland's accession to the Alliance is different from the situation with Ukraine "because Russia did not have disputes with Finland."

On April 5, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky visited Poland. Following the meeting with the Ukrainian President, the country's leader Andrzej Duda said that Poland had already prepared for the transfer to Ukraine of 4 MiG-29 fighters, in addition to the 4 previously transferred aircraft. Furthermore, the Polish President said that if necessary, Poland can still transfer its aircraft to Ukraine but this matter should be agreed with the allies.

That is why Volodymyr Zelensky urged Andrzej Duda to manifest leadership in the matter of transferring F-16 aircraft to Ukraine, as was the case with Leopard 2 tanks.

Also, the President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, signed a "Letter of intent on cooperation in the supply of defense equipment." According to Zelensky, Poland and Ukraine agreed on a new package of military assistance, which will include armored personnel carriers (APCs), air defense systems, mortars, and other weapons. "Today we are signing a document on the supply of Polish Rosomak armored personnel carriers, Rak self-propelled mortars, air defense systems, in particular the very effective Piorun man-portable air defense systems, MiGs and other weapons that we so badly need," the President said.

In addition, the trip resulted in an agreement that the state enterprise "Ukroboronprom" together with the Polish company Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa will jointly produce 125 mm shells for tanks. Production will be carried out in Poland.

On April 6, in an evening video address, Volodymyr Zelensky called the results of his trip to Poland tangible for the front.