Zelenskiy accuses Russia of ‘genocide’ over kidnapping of children and says Ukraine preparing global peace summit – live | United Nations

Zelenskiy says he presented the outlines of a Ukrainian peace formula during his video address at last year’s UN general assembly.

He says he plans to present the details at tomorrow’s UN security council, and that more than 140 states and international organisations have either fully or partly supported the formula.

The Ukrainian peace formula is becoming global. It’s poised to offer solutions and steps that will solve all forms of weaponisation that Russia used against Ukraine and other countries.

Zelenskiy says the world has witnessed Russia using energy as a weapon. “Now this threat is even greater,” he says.

Russia is weaponising nuclear energy. Not only it is spreading its unreliable nuclear power plant construction technologies, but it is also turning other countries power plants into real dirty bombs.

He says there is no accountability for the “treacherous” actions by Russia, citing the example of the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

We know the names of tens of thousands of children and have evidence on hundreds of thousands of others kidnapped by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine and later deported.

The international criminal court issued arrest warrants for these crimes and we are trying to get children back home. Fine. Time goes by what will happen with them?

Zelenskiy warns that those children will be taught to hate Ukraine and all ties with their families will be broken. He adds:

This is clearly a genocide.

Zelenskiy says Russia is weaponising many things not just against Ukraine, but also against other countries as well.

He says it is clear that Russia is attempting to weaponising the food shortage on the global market in exchange for recognition of its captured territories in Ukraine.

Russia is launching the food prices as weapons. The impact spans from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the south-east Asia.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is set to address the UN general assembly in-person for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In 2022, Zelenskiy sent a pre-recorded speech to the UN. In his speech today, the Ukrainian leader is expected to make his case to the world and to Washington for continued help in repelling Russia’s invasion, nearly 19 months into the war.

US president Joe Biden said Russia was seeking to “brutalise” Ukraine, “without consequence” during his speech to UN general assembly.

Biden held Russia solely accountable for the conflict saying:

Russia alone stands in the way of peace because Russia’s price for peace is Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory.

Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, was seen during Biden’s speech scrolling through his phone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy, sat alongside a delegation of senior Ukrainian officials, applauded the US president’s remarks.

We have a clip of this key moment in his speech:

Julian Borger

The US, Ukraine and their allies will also emphasise the impact of Russian aggression on G77 countries, most importantly in the form of the Black Sea grain initiative, which was supposed to provide safe passage for Ukrainian cereal exports.

Vladimir Putin’s withdrawal from the initiative in July led to a spike in grain prices and had a direct impact on the World Food Programme’s capacity to feed populations threatened by famine in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Turkish-led attempts to persuade Putin to change his mind have failed, and Ukraine’s backers will point to that refusal to pile up pressure on Russia this week.

Caitlin Welsh, director of the global food and water security programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes Putin is highly unlikely to bow to that pressure.

Russia sees nearly all upside and very little downside in remaining outside of the agreement. The upside that Russia sees is that Russia benefits from the destruction of Ukraine’s agriculture sector.

The diversion of Ukrainian grain exports westwards has also aroused protectionist responses from European farmers. “Russia also sees upside in disunity within the EU with regard to trade disruptions,” Welsh said.

The launching of the Black Sea grain initiative in July last year was a highlight of António Guterres’ tenure as secretary general, and its collapse is a setback both for his leadership and for the UN as a whole. It comes at a time when the UN is struggling to justify its preeminence among a proliferation of international groups based on regional geography and common interests.

Julian Borger

The greatest geopolitical drama of the week is expected to spring from the presence of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will address the general assembly in person for the first time.

On Wednesday, Zelenskiy will address a security council meeting on the war in Ukraine, which is also due to be attended by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

That does not necessarily mean there will be a personal confrontation. Last year, Lavrov entered the council chamber to deliver his remarks and then left. But an unplanned close encounter is always possible.

Richard Gowan, the UN director at the International Crisis Group, described Zelenskiy’s decision to attend the general assembly in the flesh as a gamble at a time when there is growing pressure, especially from G77 states, to agree a ceasefire while just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under occupation.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the element of risk,” Gowan said.

If Zelenskiy goes to the general assembly and to the security council, and insists that Ukraine has to fight on, and that this is not a moment for diplomacy, I think that he will get a lot of pushback.

Zelenskiy’s strategy in recent months, rather than allow his government to be portrayed as “against peace”, has been to launch his own initiative to pursue a settlement founded on the principles of the UN Charter, national sovereignty and territorial integrity that almost all UN member states claim to uphold.

Patrick Wintour

The council on foreign relations thinktank in New York has denied reports that it cancelled its much criticised meeting for the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi to come to speak to an invited audience.

Criticism started when private invitations went out last week including some in the Iranian diaspora who thought Raisi was a human rights abuser and an inappropriate man to speak to an audience that believed in liberal values. No immediate official statement was given by the CFR, but protests were gathering outside the New York thinktank.

The event in common with sessions with world leaders visiting New York for the UN had not been advertised. Nearly 180 thinktanks and NGOs had written to the CFR asking for the invitation to be withdrawn on the basis of his human rights record.

The authors recognised the CFR role as a platform for dialogue but added:

There can be no justification for inviting a perpetrator of crimes against humanity to speak at your panel.

Nazanin Boniadi, the actress and human rights advocate, said on Twitter she had declined the invitation, citing his complicity in crimes against humanity. She said:

Some say that these meetings allow us to hold the feet of dictators to the fire, but the past 44 years have shown us that not only are these meetings futile, the Islamic Republic uses them to legitimize themselves on the global stage. Continuing the same practices and expecting tyrants to change their behavior seems completely irrational. Democratic institutions hold the key to tipping the balance of power in favour of those risking everything for freedom. If you afford your members the opportunity to meet dictators behind closed doors, then at least offer them the chance to also hear from their opponents in the open.

The CFR denied the reports that the meeting with Raisi had been cancelled, but said it had been postponed at the request of the Iranians until Wednesday and at a different location site.

As public and politicians wait for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to address the UN general assembly, here’s where things stand so far today:

• Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged to step up efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine “through diplomacy and dialogue”.

• Joe Biden accused Russia of “shredding longstanding arms control agreements” but pledged that the US would “lead by example” in limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He warned against allowing Russia to “brutalize” Ukraine without consequences.

• Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda used his address to say the “brutal” war in Ukraine must end and that it cannot be “converted into a frozen war”. He called for “restoring the full territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders.”

• France called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council over the launch by Azerbaijan of a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Biden pledged to ‘responsibly manage’ competition with China so it does not ‘slip into conflict’.

• Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for more action to resist climate change and said there was progress on protecting the Amazon rainforest. He called for work “to create space for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine.

Aamna Mohdin

A UN report calling on countries to consider financial reparations for transatlantic slavery has been hailed as a significant step forward by campaigners.

The report by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said no country had comprehensively accounted for the past and addressed the legacy of the mass enslavement of people of African descent for more than 400 years.

“Under international human rights law, compensation for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, may also constitute a form of reparations,” the report said.

In the context of historical wrongs and harms suffered as a result of colonialism and enslavement, the assessment of the economic damage can be extremely difficult owing to the length of time passed and the difficulty of identifying the perpetrators and victims.

The report stressed, however, that the difficulty in making a legal claim to compensation “cannot be the basis for nullifying the existence of underlying legal obligations”.

Campaigners have described the report as an important step forward in the fight for reparative justice.