(updated version)
NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has made an emotional appeal to the countries of the world to strongly condemn Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. “Today we all have to choose between peace and aggression, between justice and the will of the stronger, between acting and looking the other way,” said the Green politician on Tuesday evening at the emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. She accused Russian Foreign Minister Sergey 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 will not fool us and not our population. And you will not fool your own population.” For her speech, the politician traveled for the first time as a minister to the US east coast metropolis directly 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 spoke in English from the famous stage of the largest UN body – behind her UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres, who had taken his place in the great hall on the East River for the speech. He heard the German foreign minister scathingly 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 insists 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 bombing and rocket attacks.”
In the hall, Baerbock then appealed to the representatives of the 192 other UN member states in the General Assembly to support a vote on a resolution directed against Russia on Wednesday. “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 will have 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 as many of the 193 member countries as possible will condemn Russia’s war of aggression when the General Assembly votes, thereby making visible the worldwide 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 that invalidated a Russian referendum in Crimea. At that time, 100 member states voted for the text./bk/DP/he