The meeting came amid a week of escalating actions by Moscow, including ordering the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops and planned “sham referendums” in Russian-held regions of Ukraine. “That President Putin chose this week, as most of the world gathers at the United Nations, to add fuel to the fire he has lit shows his utter contempt and disdain for the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly and this Council,” Blinken said. . Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was absent from the room for all but his own remarks, in which he rejected widespread international condemnation and again blamed Kyiv for Moscow’s invasion. Blinken and others, including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, highlighted the atrocities unfolding in Ukraine, the global impact of the war on things like food security, and called on Russia to stop its nuclear crackdown. The top US diplomat said Vladimir Putin’s threat to use “every weapon system at his disposal” on Russia is “even more threatening given Russia’s intention to annex large parts of Ukraine in the coming days”. “When this is completed, we can expect that President Putin will claim any attempt by Ukraine to liberate this land as an attack on so-called Russian territory,” Blinken explained. “This from a country that, in January of this year, in this place, joined the other permanent members of the Security Council in signing a statement affirming that, and I quote, ‘nuclear war can never be won and must never be be conducted. Another example of how Russia is violating the commitments it has made to this body, and one more reason why no one should take Russia at its word today.” “Every member of the Council should send a clear message that these reckless nuclear threats must stop immediately,” he said. Blinken said Russia’s efforts to annex more Ukrainian territory — which US officials say is the expected next step after referendums called this week by the Russian-backed leaders of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics — is “another dangerous escalation and repudiation of diplomacy.” “It is even more alarming when combined with the infiltration operations that Russian forces are conducting throughout the areas of Ukraine they control,” Blinken said. “This is a diabolical strategy: forcibly uproot hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, bus in Russians to replace them, call for a vote and manipulate the results to show near-unanimous support for joining the Russian Federation. Right out of the Crimea playbook.” He again called for accountability for crimes uncovered in former Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, such as Bucha, Irpin, Izyum, where mass graves were discovered and survivors recounted acts of torture. “These are not acts of rogue units; they fit a clear pattern across territory controlled by Russian forces,” Blinken said. “This is one of the many reasons we support a range of national and international efforts to collect and examine the growing evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.” Blinken reiterated that the United States will continue to support Ukraine and called on others to do the same. “President Putin is making his choice. Now it’s up to all our countries to make ours. Tell President Putin to stop the horrors he’s started. Tell him to stop putting his interests above the interests of the rest of the world, including his own Tell him to stop belittling this Council and everything it stands for,” Blinken said. “One man chose this war. And one man can end it,” he said. “Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.”
