Russia’s foreign minister reinforced the Kremlin’s disagreements with the West in his United Nations General Assembly remarks Saturday and showed no interest in a genuine peace with Ukraine.
“I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” Sergey Lavrov said.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin revised his government’s nuclear doctrine, in a clear attempt to discourage the West from lifting its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons to strike inside Russian territory.
Lavrov dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace formula as “doomed,” and said a resolution of the conflict is not possible unless the root causes of the crisis, as Moscow sees them, are addressed.
The veteran diplomat also took the opportunity to repeat complaints about NATO, Washington, London and the European Union.
His speech came a few hours after Lebanese Hezbollah acknowledged the death of their leader, Hassan Nasrallah, following a series of targeted Israeli airstrikes in Beirut.
“We are particularly concerned by the now almost commonplace practice of political killings, as once again, took place yesterday in Beirut,” he told the assembly.
At a news conference following his speech, Lavrov expressed concerns about a wider regional war.
“A lot of people say that Israel wants to create the grounds to drag the U.S. directly into this,” he said. “And so, to create these grounds, is trying to provoke Iran and Hezbollah. So the Iran leadership, I think, are behaving extremely responsibly, and this is something that we should take due note of.”
War in Ukraine
In February 2022, Russia and China declared a “no limits partnership,” just days before President Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The United States has repeatedly accused China of assisting the Kremlin with its war.
“China, another permanent member of this council, is the top provider of machine tools, microelectronics, and other items that Russia is using to rebuild, to restock, to ramp up its war machine and sustain its brutal aggression,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday at a high-level U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine that President Zelenskyy attended.
Beijing denies the charge and has sought to distance itself publicly from Moscow on the war.
“The top priority is to commit to no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting, and no provocation by any party, and push for de-escalation of the situation as soon as possible,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the General Assembly on Saturday.
Beijing says it is committed to playing “a constructive role” in ending the conflict.
China and ‘multipolar world’
On the margins of the annual U.N. meetings, China and Brazil launched what they are calling the group of friends for peace for Ukraine, which includes several other countries from the global south.
In a sign of China’s desire to be recognized as a global economic and political power, Wang said international relations should be “more democratic.”
“Gone are the days when one or two major powers call the shots on everything,” he said. “We should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world and see that all countries, regardless of their size, have their own place and role in the multipolar system.”
Wang also called for full U.N. membership for the Palestinians and urged implementation of a two-state solution.
“There must not be any delay in reaching a comprehensive cease-fire, and the fundamental way out lies in the two-state solution,” he said.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi asked the assembly how the international community could believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim on Friday that “Israel yearns for peace.”
“Yesterday, while he was here, Israel conducted an unprecedented, massive air attack on Beirut. Prime Minister Netanyahu wants the war to continue. We must stop that! I repeat, we must stop that! We must pressure Israel to come back to a political solution for a two-state solution,” she said to much applause.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister also expressed concern about regional stability following the escalation in Lebanon.
“We call on all parties to show wisdom and to show restraint in order to avoid a true war breaking out in the region,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud said.
