The US president launches a forceful direct attack against Putin in his speech before the UN
He denounces their threats and says that “a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be waged.”
Since George Bush attacked Saddam Hussein from the podium of the plenary debate of the United Nations General Assembly, he has not remembered a president of USA such a direct singling out of another world leader as the one Joe Biden launched this Wednesday against his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putinfor the war in Ukraine. On the same day that the Kremlin leader announced a mobilization of 300,000 reservists and once again made veiled but unequivocal nuclear threats, Biden has directly singled out the Russian president, defining his invasion of Ukraine as “a brutal and unnecessary war chosen by a man & rdquor ;.
“A permanent member of the Security Council invaded his neighbor, tried to erase the sovereign state of the map & rdquor ;, has denounced the Democrat, who has accused Russia of having “blatantly violated the central principles of the Charter of the United Nations & rdquor;. Specifically, Biden has pointed to the “farce & rdquor; of referendums organized by the Kremlin in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and in the occupied southern Ukrainian territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia as “significant” violations; of that founding charter of the organization.
Biden has also spoken of “scandalous & rdquor; and of “atrocities and war crimes” for which the Kremlin should be held accountable, mentioning the mass graves and the signs of torture identified on corpses but also the attacks on schools, hospitals and stations.
Likewise, he has questioned Putin’s arguments for launching the invasion, assuring that “no one threatened Russia and no one but Russia sought conflict”. And he has made a summary of the substance of the conflict: “This war tries to extinguish Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and as a people & rdquor ;, he has said. “Wherever they are, live where they live and believe what they believe, should make your blood run cold”.
Nuclear conflict and world order
The US president has also warned about the threats of nuclear conflict that Putin has been launching, and in the face of this challenge, he has not only assured that Washington will continue to seek “critical arms control measures & rdquor; but it has also launched a global message: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”.
For Biden, Russia’s actions are not only an affront to Ukraine, but to the entire system established after World War II. And that is why in his speech before the UN he has assured that “if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences we put at risk everything that this institution represents, everything”.
Security Council reform
The US leader has also taken advantage of the situation to indirectly underline the inability to deal with the conflict of the Security Council, the body that is in charge of maintaining peace and security and where the five countries that are permanent members, including Russia, China and the US itself, have veto power. And he has urged the members of the Council to “maintain and defend the charter and refrain from using the veto except in specific and extraordinary situations & rdquor ;. It is a power that Moscow has used frequently in recent months but that Washington has also used repeatedly in the past to veto, for example, resolutions referring to Israel for actions in Palestine.
Biden has assured that “the time has come for this institution to become more inclusive, in order to better respond to the needs of today’s world” and, in his most open and forceful statement to date on the reform proposals for that body, he stated that “the United States supports increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives on the Council. that includes permanent seats for countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean”. It is a proposal that knows that at this precise moment it will not go ahead, but it would allow Moscow or Beijing to be portrayed as barriers.
Sánchez: “He is losing the war”
The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, who is in New York for the General Assembly, also addressed the situation in Ukraine and Putin’s latest actions on Wednesday. In an informal conversation with journalists, Sánchez has branded the call for the referendums as “a joke in bad taste” and has assured that the Russian leader “is in a flight forward“, interpreting his latest actions as showing that he “has come to terms with losing the war”.
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In an official speech at a forum on the role of Spain, the US and Latin America in the global economy organized by the newspaper ‘El País’, Sánchez denounced the referendums and assured that “they will never be accepted by the international community”. Also, he has described “totally unacceptable” the threats launched by Putin, but he has made a call with journalists to toning down the rhetoric about the nuclear threatr, urging to “be prudent Y not contribute to verbal escalation“.
Sánchez has also addressed the potential scenario of Russia deciding cut gas to Europe. “I think the possibility of a total supply cut is real because of an autocrat’s willingness to turn the Energy also in a weapon of war for blackmail to the world and especially to Europe”, he said. And in view of this, he urged to prepare “contingency plans to give an answer to any scenariohowever adverse this may be”.