UN Security Council hears echoed demands to end war in Ukraine

· 6 min read
UN Security Council hears echoed demands to end war in Ukraine

While recent events might suggest that this would be a good time to start offering compromises, it would require Putin admitting that he has made a huge blunder. For now he must hope that his forces, despite sustaining heavy losses after half a year’s fighting and being rocked by their recent failures, will hang on. Even if Moscow did make an offer, the Ukrainians would be disinclined to accept. They are encouraged by their successes to carry on with their task of pushing out the Russians, determined that aggression must not pay and that there will be no permanent transfer of any territory, including Crimea, to Russia. When one side expects victory and sees no need for a negotiation, then it may take some serious escalation by the other to force a change of mind. An example of this came when North Vietnam  launched a major offensive against the South in March 1972.

  • The compact would require neither Russia’s assent nor Ukraine’s neutrality.
  • We should not assume that a quick conclusion based on mutual concessions is the best way to deal with an ongoing war.
  • Digitization and the growth of the venture capital industry means that new enterprises can start and grow very quickly (TikTok is the example many think of).
  • And even though the fall of the Soviet Union was notable for its lack of bloodshed, many in Ukraine refer to today's conflict as a true "war of independence."

If Kyiv did not wage war on the people of Donetsk and Luhansk, there would have been no need for Russia’s special military operation, he added. Might it be possible this war could spill outside Ukraine's borders? President Putin could seek to regain more parts of Russia's former empire by sending troops into ex-Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia, that are not part of Nato.

Echoing calls for peace

The head of NATO recently warned that the war could go on for years. That is indeed what NATO is working towards – an open-ended conflict draining Russia and enfeebling a rival in what has evidently become a proxy war, with Ukraine as the battlefield. We have managed this despite an unprecedented onslaught against us, headed by Labour leader Keir Starmer. He has sought to insulate Labour from anti-war opinion, with it must be conceded a degree of success at the parliamentary level, if much less success amongst ordinary Labour members and less still in the trade union movement.

  • As for Ukraine's offensive, Mr Podolyak said the Wagner mutiny did not last long enough to influence the fighting along a front of 1,800 kilometres, the longest - he said - in any war since 1945.
  • But he also urged Ukraine to think about future peace terms.
  • A prominent war expert says the US is on the verge of lessening its support for, or even withdrawing from, NATO - with potentially catastrophic consequences for Europe.
  • Traditionally, it is the job of a spy to keep secrets - but as the invasion of Ukraine loomed, Western intelligence officials made the unusual decision to tell the world what they knew.

But Biden and other Western leaders should tell them that this is an option they will have if their counteroffensive is still grinding on next year. It could prove the best chance to achieve the victory that Ukraine and the democratic world need soon, while making it both Putin- and Trump-proof. Tom Malinowski was a Democratic member of Congress representing New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2023, and assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration. There are competing views among the Russian military and political elites as to how to get out of the mess. With its retreat from Kherson, Russia has suffered its worst failure of the war since the invasion started to go wrong at the end of February.

Ukraine: UN General Assembly demands Russia reverse course on ‘attempted illegal annexation’

Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. With Western hesitancy bolstering Russia, and in the absence of either a coup or a health-related issue leading to Putin's demise, the only foreseeable outcome will be a negotiated settlement  that for now both sides continue to refuse. Recently, Ukraine's winter offensive seems to have come to a halt. More than ever, the outcome depends on political decisions made miles away from the centre of the conflict - in Washington and in Brussels.

what will stop the war in ukraine

The first time some Russian officials were told that their country might be seriously intending to act against Ukraine was when they heard it from the director of the CIA, one official says. As the agreement expires in March, he called for its extension. The war has caused a grave global crisis, including among developing countries, cancelling out gains made in the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, said Domingos Estêvão Fernandes of Mozambique, which had cast an abstention on the new General Assembly resolution. Echoing calls for peace, many Council members pointed to such reflections of strong international support as the 141 countries who voted for the General Assembly’s new resolution. Recalling that the conflict had started with a coup in 2014, he said Ukraine is “not a victim” and is “up to its elbows in blood and Nazi tattoos”.

This is why Ukraine remains wary of proposals for a cessation of hostilities without a proper political settlement. Then, as Russia bombarded residential buildings and acted viciously in occupied areas, and as its forces gave up on their attempts to take Kyiv, the mood in Ukraine became uncompromising. The only acceptable outcome was to get Russian forces completely off their territory. Moscow claimed to be focusing on the Donbas, although in months of fighting it did not make sufficient progress to be able to control all of this territory. It then seemed to be interested in incorporating whatever it had occupied into Russia, but again was thwarted by Ukrainian resistance, and more recently the astonishing offensives in the regions of Kherson and Kharkiv. In private, Western and Ukrainian officials are starting to ponder what a stable outcome might look like.

U.S. trainers continued working in Ukraine right up until the full-scale Russian invasion a year ago. Mr Putin is hoping his campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity grid will freeze the country into submission, or at least turn it into a weak, failing state. But  https://euronewstop.co.uk/who-predicted-russia-ukraine-war.html  of past conflicts is that aerial bombing of civilians, in the absence of an effective ground campaign, rarely secures victory. The precise terms of any negotiated settlement depend on what happens on the battlefield.

  • These scenarios are not mutually exclusive - some of each could combine to produce different outcomes.
  • There can be no solution that does not give these concerns due weight.
  • Surely, if the lives of Ukrainian people are our concern then the west has to do something to stop the war – now.
  • With major military packages trapped under political disagreements in the US and European Union, Ukraine is having to adapt, and look inwards.
  • For Ukraine, the problem is it's running low on these missiles.

I mean—voting was held with guards with machine guns at the polling stations and we’ve seen reports of men with guns at people’s doors, forcing Ukrainians to fill out ballots while being watched. We should not assume that a quick conclusion based on mutual concessions is the best way to deal with an ongoing war. Overall, Putin still maintains that everything is going according to plan.

Along the road to ending apartheid, the Security Council, in 1963, instituted a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa, and the General Assembly refused to accept the country’s credentials from 1970 to 1974. Following this ban, South Africa did not participate in further proceedings of the Assembly until the end of apartheid in 1994. Acting under Chapter VI of the Charter, the Council can call upon parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommend methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. It can also recommend the referral of disputes to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is widely known as the ‘World Court’ and is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, seated at The Hague in the Netherlands. Although there are still some 60 UN Member States that have never sat on the Security Council, all members of the UN, however, agree under Article 25 of the Charter, to accept and carry out decisions adopted by the Council. In other words, actions taken by the Council are binding on all UN member countries.

  • With food and fuel bills soaring already, this war comes at an unaffordable price for working people.
  • Meanwhile, there is no guarantee that the United States and its allies will continue paying for Ukraine’s offensive operations for as long as it takes.
  • But opinion is more divided when it comes to reconquering Crimea.
  • We have managed this despite an unprecedented onslaught against us, headed by Labour leader Keir Starmer.

In these talks Russia demanded that Ukraine recognise Russia-occupied Crimea and grant independence to Luhansk and Donetsk. Negotiations continued on March 3, 2022, with both Moscow and Kyiv agreeing to establish humanitarian corridors in order to evacuate citizens. Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia began on Monday, February 28, 2022 just four days after the invasion. "During the First World War, aviation was born," says Stitch. "Now we are starting the future war of drones, which maybe in two decades will turn the tide of any war."