At the United Nations, world leader try to confront Russia’s assault on Ukraine

The helplessness of the United Nations in the months leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be impossible to ignore at the annual marquee event of international diplomacy.
For an institution born out of war to preserve peace, its struggle for relevance in the face of the worst conflict in Europe since World War II revives an exential question: If it couldn’t stop the numerous clashes that have arisen since its formation, most recently Russia’s attack on its neighbour, a modern democracy — then what is its purpose?
As leaders descend upon New York this week, where Group of Seven leaders are likely to make speeches decrying Russia for a brutal war, interviews with several officials reveal a rising frustration with a body founded nearly 80 years ago that is increasingly powerless to shape global events from Yemen to Afghanan.
These diplomats trace the UN’s downward trajectory to events in 2011, when Russia felt tricked into abstaining from a UN Security Council resolution that allowed US allies to bomb Lia. It was a turning point.
What was hailed then in London, Paris and Washington as a triumph of multilateralism was viewed differently in Moscow. Vladimir Putin, who was biding his time as prime miner because he was not allowed to serve more than two terms as president, was appalled.

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— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 20, 2022
He saw images of the violent killing of dictator Muammar Qaddafi an angry mob and railed against the overreach from the US and its allies as a “medieval call for a crusade.”
Putin’s anger over Lia proved somewhat well-founded as the North African country plunged into civil war and years of turmoil as the US and Europe pulled back following the military campaign. His later intervention in Syria reflected Russian determination to push back at what the Kremlin perceived as US-led efforts to oust another regional leader.
As soon as Putin was back in the driving seat, the dynamics among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council — the winners of  WW2 — changed for good.
US and Russia ambassadors used to spar publicly, but privately they enjoyed moments of levity. That may be hard to believe against the backdrop of a mural of a phoenix rising in the chamber. These days diplomats describe the mood in the room as toxic, with trust as low as during the Cold War.
Putin addresses the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. (Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images)
They recall when there were once robust, even fey, debates versus a forum where people talk over each other, disseminate propaganda or simply tune each other out. They see it as a UN reduced to observer status.
The UN still plays a critical role on many global challenges, including climate change negotiations, fighting poverty and disease. Under the leadership of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the agency helped broker an evacuation of civilians during the devastating Russian siege of  the Ukrainian city of Mariupol and facilitated international negotiations to free up shipments of Ukrainian grain amid a Russian blockade and a global food shortage.
But within the Security Council, an erosion of mutual respect has been happening for some time. At one meeting a few years back on Afghanan, an official who was there remembers how the Russian ambassador lened to what his colleagues with similar veto-wielding status had to say but when it was the turn of other Security Council members to speak he buried his face in a newspaper.
From a Russian perspective, the 2003 invasion of Iraq underlined the growing impotence of the UN when the US and its allies invaded after the Security Council refused to support military action. Putin sided with the leaders of France and Germany in opposing the invasion while US evidence presented to the Security Council in support of war was later shown to be untrue.
Russia has deployed its veto more than any other permanent council member. The runner-up is the US, which has frequently used its power to block resolutions affecting Israel.

World leaders gathered in-person at the 77th United Nations General Assembly in which the U.N. secretary general stressed the need to fix ‘global dysfunction’ as climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wreaks havoc https://t.co/kh8oZM5jRp pic.twitter.com/7dkPjdelFQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 21, 2022
Russia and China often operate as a tag team, a practice that reflects the “no limits” friendship between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. On the opposite side, there is a trio of nations Russia is deeply suspicious of — US, UK and France — working in unison.
As one senior diplomat put it, the war in Ukraine has contaminated every single item of the international agenda, laid differences bare to such at an extent that there is virtually no room left to maneuver on anything.
US President Joe Biden will address the world body on Wednesday to continue to rally support for Ukraine, and make the case for an expansion of the Security Council to include Japan and Germany.
A former Western official who spent years casting votes in the Security Council recalls wfully a golden age following the fall of the Berlin Wall, only to see that idealism begin to evaporate toward the end of the 2000s.
That warmer period coincided with Sergei Lavrov’s decade-long stint as Russia’s envoy to the UN — it was a period of greater international cooperation following the end of the Cold War and through the invasion of Afghanan after the Sept. 11  terror attacks in the US.
Police close off streets near the United Nations headquarters on Monday. (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
That came to an end in the fall-out from the Iraq crisis. Veteran diplomats have fond memories of Lavrov lighting cigarettes and downing whiskies in the delegates lounge, whose vintage 1950s décor was lost to an unpopular refurbishment.
His reputation at the time was as a wily diplomat able to outfox the Americans. Now he’s viewed firmly as an attack dog for Putin.
The US granted him a visa to return to his old stomping ground to represent Russia from the green marble podium. His intervention at the UN Human Rights Council in March, where he accused Ukraine of seeking a nuclear arsenal, prompted a walkout. A similar reaction in New York, in front of a bigger audience, is likely.
The last time Putin came to New York to address fellow leaders was in 2015, and that was to slam the US over Syria. Two days later Russia sent military jets in to help President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch ally and one was determined would not meet the same fate as Qaddafi.
Still, that doesn’t mean China and Russia don’t view the UN as important. In a February joint statement that exceeded 5,000 words, which was released shortly before Putin invaded Ukraine, the two countries mentioned the UN a dozen times while saying they would push for the Security Council to play “a central and coordinating role” in their push for a multipolar world.

24-year-old poet Amanda Gorman wanted to express the impact of unity through her words in front of world leaders at the United Nations. pic.twitter.com/GwULPJQkfU
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 20, 2022
China in particular has used the UN and its agencies for its claims to have broad support on issues like Taiwan, its treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and the probe into the origins of Covid-19. Beijing has cited backing from a range of developing countries at the UN to cast the US and its allies as out of step with global public opinion, with one top diplomat telling US officials in 2021 that the “so-called rules-based international order” is only advocated the US and “a small number of countries.”
Bob Rae, Canada’s permanent representative at the UN, said much of the criticism of the global body tends to fall under former US diplomat Richard Holbrooke’s famous quip that blaming the UN for things going wrong is like blaming Madison Square Gardens every time the Knicks basketball team play poorly. In short, you can’t blame the building.
He, like others, say the body’s true value lies in its myriad agencies rather than the high-profile Security Council, in driving policy on climate change, providing humanitarian assance and food aid.

Eelam Tamils protest outside United Nationshttps://t.co/KSk7aZLSNm pic.twitter.com/Bl2uLY6IiY
— Tamil Guardian (@TamilGuardian) September 19, 2022
“There might have been a lot of rhetoric about how the UN would bring an end to war,” Rae said. “But the reality is the institutions that were established in 1945 on the peace and security side never had the capacity to do that.”
Others say the UN is a vast bureaucracy resant to reforming itself.
The UK, France and Soviet Union were imperial powers when the body was founded, while poorer states and colonies had little say in global affairs, a UN diplomat from a major developing country said.  But while many of these nations are now populous regional powers, the diplomat said, they still lack meaningful influence at the UN because the organization’s structure remains basically unchanged.
One senior diplomat from a veto-wielding nation added that in an ideal world the veto power would be scrapped, but the reality was that no country enjoying such a privilege would willingly give it up.