Spare no effort to end Ukraine war, says UN chief at third-year mark

Geneva — UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Monday, the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that countries must work to bring an end to the war.

“We must spare no effort to bring an end to this conflict, and achieve a just and lasting peace in line with the UN Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions,” he told a high-level meeting of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) in Geneva, repeating that Russia’s actions in February 2022 violated the global body’s founding document, the UN Charter.

A showdown on Ukraine looms at the UN in New York later on Monday, with the US urging states to back its resolution, which it says is focused on ending the war and pits it against a rival text by Ukraine and European allies. That motion repeats the UN demand that Russia withdraw its troops and halt hostilities, which has received overwhelming support in the past.

The UN split illustrates the position Ukraine finds itself in as it enters the fourth year of all-out war with Russia, with the backing of its staunchest ally the US fraying amid growing pressure from Washington for a deal to end the war.

UN rights chief Volker Turk told the Geneva meeting any sustainable peace “must be anchored in the rights, needs and aspirations of the Ukrainian people, in accountability, and in the principles of the UN Charter and international law”.

Washington did not attend, leaving its seat at the Human Rights Council empty, in line with US President Donald Trump’s decision to disengage from the body that is the only intergovernmental organisation that protects human rights.

A representative of Russia, which claimed it had no choice but to launch what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine due to the Nato alliance’s eastward expansion, will address the meeting on Wednesday.

Guterres said human rights globally were being “suffocated”, and referred to intolerable levels of death and destruction in Gaza, as well as horrifying human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Turk, an Austrian lawyer, warned that the system of global protections built in the decades after World War 2 had never before been under so much strain.

Reuters