United Nations powerless to stop Ukraine war

Mark O'Neill September 30, 2024 22:52

Chapter One of the objectives of the United Nations states: “to maintain international peace and security … take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace … bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”

This month the General Assembly of the U.N. is holding its annual meeting in New York, attended by leaders of countries all over the world who address the assembly and meet each other. Has it settled the greatest land war in Europe since World War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

It is the opposite. It has been the platform for the two sides to pour out their hatred of the other and lay out peace proposals the other will not accept. Since the invasion in February 2022, the U.N. has completely failed in its most important mission.

“Ukraine will never accept a peace agreement imposed on it by Russia,” its president Volodymyr Zelensky told the Assembly. “Russia can only be forced to make peace and that it is exactly what needs to be done.”

Fearful of being arrested for war crimes, President Vladimir Putin did not go to New York. Vasily Nebenzya, his representative on the Security Council, said: “The Ukrainian nation is not in danger. We are not fighting her. We are fighting a criminal regime that has seized power in Kiev and is leading its people to disaster. This is not a war ‘for territories’, as our enemies claim. This is a battle for people's consciousness and rights.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the Council that the Russian regime had, like the Nazis in World War Two, kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children and given them to Russian families to strip them of their Ukrainian identity and language.

“The Nazis transferred thousands of Polish and Soviet children from Poland to the west to be Germanised – blond, blue-eyed and Aryan, children deemed to be racially suitable,” he said. He showed the Council a photograph of officers of the Wehrmacht and the Soviet Army shaking hands to celebrate their joint invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Russia say Germany alone invaded Poland and started World War Two.

The U.N. has watched powerless the worst war in Europe since 1945. According to Ukrainian figures, 610,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded and 31,000 Ukrainians killed. Foreign analysts say the number of Ukrainians killed is several times that.

Videos on the Internet show scenes from the Apocalypse – Russian soldiers walk through a forest stripped of all vegetation, over legs and arms of their comrades and holding their noses to combat the overwhelming stench of decaying corpses: a Russian soldier with a bare chest curled up in a pit because he refused a combat mission, while his comrades hurl abuse and swear words at him.

Citizens from Nepal, India, Nigeria and Indonesia in the Russian army are captured by the Ukrainian side. They explain they were promised jobs in the medical, transport or cooking units of the army but were sent instead to the front line. The great majority do not speak Russian and did not understand the orders of their commanders. In Katmandu, mothers and wives of Nepalis who went to fight explain, weeping, that they have no news of their missing loved ones and none of the money promised to them.

On the Ukrainian side, parents weep next to the bodies of their children killed in a Russian missile strike on their apartment building – civilians thousands of kilometres from the front line. At a sports field in Kyiv, veterans who have lost a leg play football using a prosthetic one. More than 25,000 Ukrainians have lost a limb.

In April 2022, Zelenskyy said: “where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee?”
The main reason is that Russia, one of the five permanent members of the Council, is the aggressor nation in this war, and any resolution needs to be passed without veto. Russia has vetoed any resolution against its interests. So the U.N. has played no role in negotiating a peace.

Since 1992, the body has been discussing ways to make the Council more representative -- adding members like Japan, Germany, India, Brazil and from Africa and Latin America, and reorganising its voting structure. But none has been accepted. Today, with the deep divisions between Russia and China and the Western countries, no agreement is likely.

What use is the United Nations?

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.