The UN faces the challenge of maintaining the vast majority of its condemnation of Russia a year after the invasion

This Friday marks one year of one of the most absurd passages that has occurred in the history of the Security Council of the United Nations Organization (UN). An emergency meeting was being held to avoid war in the Ukraine. “Give peace a chance,” Secretary General António Guterres begged Vladimir Putin from New York. More or less at that moment, the Russian president announced in Moscow the start of “the special operation.”

Putin’s surprise and rudeness froze the expression of the attendees. Diplomats remember that meeting as one of the most embarrassing moments experienced at the United Nations.

Now that the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is fulfilled, and given the ineffectiveness of the organization’s executive arm, the UN General Assembly opened a special session on the war in Europe on Wednesday, the ultimate purpose of which is to vote on a resolution , sponsored by more than 70 countries, in which an immediate “cessation of hostilities” is urged.

This circumstance should be followed by negotiations between the parties to sign “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in line with the principles of the United Nations Charter”, an issue that entails respect for the territorial integrity of states and the withdrawal of Russian troops, according to the draft drawn up in the first instance by Ukraine.

The clash of blocks has only been increasing. The question that floats in the air, will China, which has come closer to Russia, continue to abstain as it has been doing or will it go over to the no side? It is the most observed vote to understand where things can go.

It is expected that a vote will be held this Thursday, although it could be on Friday depending on the countries that request the floor and the duration of their interventions. The European Union has turned to its involvement. The head of its diplomacy, Josep Borrell, as well as 25 foreign affairs ministers from the Eurozone, including the Spanish José Manuel Albares, who already intervened this Wednesday, have traveled to the headquarters in Manhattan.

“Russian aggression is not only an injustice for Ukraine or for Europe, it is a global threat,” stressed the minister, who stressed the role of Spain in welcoming those displaced by the conflict.

This resolution is the remaining resource for Ukraine, with the full support of the Western bloc, to try to show Russia’s isolation in the face of the impossibility of the Security Council adopting a resolution with legal value due to Moscow’s right of veto, who has already exercised it twice during this crisis.

The Assembly’s decision is not binding, much less mandatory. Its value is symbolic, although on this occasion it has a charge of greater depth and meaning.

The challenge is to know if these twelve months of war have eroded the vast majority that on four previous occasions, since February 24, 2022, has positioned itself against Russia in the General Assembly.

On the last occasion, held last October, the Western bloc scored another great diplomatic goal. Once again, only four countries such as Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Nicaragua, the so-called “pariah nations”, sided with the Kremlin, while there were 35 abstentions and 143 votes condemning the Russian annexation of four Ukrainian provinces. , which allowed its approval.

Will those 143 votes be reached or will it go back? If he came down from that ceiling, that would be a reason to celebrate Putin as a great success and confirmation that he will have managed to crack the other side. “I am convinced that there will be a vast majority and that once again we will be able to see Russia’s isolation and loneliness among nations due to this illegal aggression,” Albares responded to questions from journalists. “Abstention is useless, because Vladimir Putin will write it down, personally, as a vote in his favor,” he added.

But time has not stopped and wear and tear can take its toll. Diplomatic sources acknowledged that there are doubts about the direction of the vote in African countries, where the economic influence of Beijing, increasingly closer to Putin, is becoming stronger, as well as the Russian military presence.

The war for the invasion of Ukraine, in addition to the tragedy on the ground, drags the collateral damage of a conflict that stages the distance between the rich north and the so-called global south, developing or simply poor. The consequences are reflected in the scarcity of food supplies and of fertilizers to cultivate the land. Everything that had been promised to these countries to remedy their financial and social deficits has not only not been fulfilled, but has gotten worse.

That is why there is this uncertainty regarding whether, a year after the start of the euphemistic “special operation”, the southern bloc remains faithful to the side of the Westerners or prefers to choose to stay on the sidelines of a conflict that it increasingly considers more alien. .

In front of them they have a resolution in which the expression “ceasefire” has been deliberately replaced by that of “cessation of hostilities”. This is intended to underline a greater determination because the first implies “a calm” that facilitates a reorganization of troops, which would be eliminated in the new formulation.

The United States and its allies remarked that in this way a more forceful request for peace is included than in other newsrooms. But Moscow urged to vote against it for being an “unbalanced and anti-Russian” draft resolution, where “dialogue or negotiation is not mentioned”, in the opinion of its ambassador, Vasili Nebenzia.

After Guterres opened the Special Assembly stating that “this war is an affront to collective coexistence”, Nebenzia denounced “Russophobia” and maintained that “the West has taken off its mask”. In line with Putin’s words, she insisted that “this is not a Ukrainian war, but a conflict of the West against Russia.”

Borrell replied: “This is not the West against Russia, this is the North, South, East and West against Russia.” And the US ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, insisted that this is a conflict originated by Russia without provocation, she appealed for the withdrawal of troops and stressed Washington’s commitment to diplomacy.

This first anniversary of the war will also have a Security Council on Friday, with the presence of relevant senior officials. It will be debated, once again, without the possibility of reaching a resolution with real value. Another session of the everlasting blah, blah, blah.