the UN in a state of “brain death”

This was a bad omen for the United Nations. On Thursday, April 28, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was in the office of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmyhal in kyiv the day after a meeting in Moscow with Vladimir Putin when two Russian missiles hit shot down nearby. The ground floor of an apartment building, empty at the time, was hit, sparking fires on this downtown street. Afterwards, the former Portuguese Prime Minister said to himself “shocked” by the strike, while the Ukrainian capital had not been targeted for two weeks, after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the vicinity of the city, for lack of being able to conquer it. However, he downplayed the symbolic aspect of the attack: I don’t think it matters whether the general secretary is present or not.”.

Yet the coincidence is disturbing. “This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards international institutions, about the efforts of Russian leaders to humiliate the UN”, will denounce the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, more than two months after the start of the Russian invasion, following the first visit to Ukraine by the boss of the organization, an emblem of multilateralism. The strike then recalls, seen from New York, another Russian attack on the city of Lviv, in the west of the country, on March 25, when the president of the United States, Joe Biden, was at the airport from Rzeszow, in Poland, not very far, on the other side of the border, where transit the Western armaments forwarded in Ukraine. The UN teams, whether those who accompanied him or those who remained in New York, seemed disarmed when they heard the news, blown away by such a lack of respect for the symbol, but “not so surprised”recognized a diplomat, in shock. Because the attack materializes the mortal danger threatening an institution deeply affected by the conflict unleashed by a member state of the Security Council, responsible, in principle, for “the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Disintegration possible

On the night of February 24, when the Kremlin launched its offensive against Ukraine, it was time for emergency at UN headquarters in New York. And, already, to impotence. Barely forty minutes after the start of the war, diplomats follow one another in front of the media, at the doors of the Council Chamber, to express their indignation. At the microphone, they multiply the condemnations of Russia. The Security Council has not seen such turmoil for a long time. By attacking Ukraine, Russia has flagrantly violated key principles of the United Nations Charter, which protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its member states.

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