At the United Nations, Annalena Baerbock appealed to the international community to take a stand. The Foreign Minister also addressed the speech given by her Russian counterpart.
Annalena Baerbock has made an emotional appeal to countries around the world to strongly condemn Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. “Today we all have to decide between peace and aggression, between justice and the will of the strongest, between acting and looking the other way,” said the German Foreign Minister on Tuesday evening at the special session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. She accused Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of abusing Russia’s power as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“Your tanks don’t bring water. Your tanks don’t bring food for babies. Your tanks don’t bring peace. Your tanks bring death and destruction,” Baerbock said to Lavrov. “You can fool yourself. But you won’t fool us and you won’t fool our people. And you won’t fool your own people.” For her speech, the politician traveled to the US east coast metropolis for the first time as a minister, straight from a meeting of foreign ministers in Poland – the plane went straight to the UN in Manhattan. She is scheduled to leave New York on Wednesday.
Baerbock: “No one can be neutral on a question of war and peace”
Baerbock spoke in English from the famous stage of the largest UN body – behind her UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who had taken his place in the great hall on the East River for the speech. He heard the German foreign minister sharply accuse Moscow of “lying”: “You say you are acting in self-defense. But the whole world has watched as you spent months building up your troops to prepare for this attack.” While Russia has asserted that it wants to protect the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, it is apparent that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s troops are bombing homes of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
Before her appearance, Baerbock said it was about making it clear that the international community did not accept aggressive war: “In a question of war and peace, nobody can be neutral.” You have to decide whether you’re on the side of the aggressor or on the side of “families, of children hiding in subway tunnels from bomb and rocket attacks.”
Baerbock and UN chief Guterres meet
In the hall, Baerbock then appealed to the representatives of the 192 other UN member states in the General Assembly to support an upcoming vote on Wednesday on a resolution directed against Russia. “When we go home after our vote, each of us will have to sit at the kitchen table across from our children, our partners, our friends, our families. Then each of us has to look them in the eye and tell them the choice we made. ” It is about nothing less than the life and death of the Ukrainian population, the security of Europe and the United Nations Charter.
Western states hope that when the General Assembly votes, as many of the 193 member countries as possible will condemn Russia’s war of aggression and thus make visible the global isolation of the Russian leadership. It is only the eleventh emergency meeting in more than 70 years – it has been decades since the last such meeting. The minimum goal is to beat the votes for a 2014 resolution invalidating a Russian referendum in Crimea. At that time, 100 member states voted for the text.
After her speech, Foreign Minister Baerbock met UN chief Guterres, among others, for talks. According to the United Nations, it was mainly about the war in Ukraine.
Source: Stern
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