UN chief embraces Putin, who is busy rigging elections
Russia is meddling in crucial elections in Moldova and Georgia.
Greetings from grey and chilly Kyiv where Fall is setting in and with it, a renewed sense of disgust with the United Nations.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came to Russia for the summit of BRICS – a bloc of non-western economies including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and others who aspire to counterweight America’s leading role in financial institutions, and the world.
At the summit, Russia was desperately trying to project power and normalcy.
Putin can’t travel abroad because of the International Criminal Court arrest warrant, but that’s not a problem: world leaders come to him. They come and smile and shake Putin’s bloody hands and act as if it’s business as usual, as if Russia is not the most sanctioned country in the world because it is waging a genocide.
The “they” includes 36 countries and a special guest – the 75-year-old Guterres, who met with Putin at the summit’s sidelines.
After criticism from Ukraine and some of its allies, the UN said it was “standard practice” to take part in meetings with states that represent almost half of the world’s population.
Then why did Guterres decline to participate in Ukraine’s Peace Summit, which hosted more than three times as many UN member states who discussed how to uphold international law, not circumvent it?
Guterres planned to come to Kyiv after BRICS, but reportedly Ukraine canceled the visit. It is another one of those absurd moments when many in Ukraine (and other states the UN has failed) question why the organization even exists.
On the frontline, the North Korean saga continues. Zelensky said Russia will deploy the newcomers by today, Oct. 28.
Ukraine’s Military intelligence said Russia planned to assign one interpreter to every 30 North Korean soldiers for coordination. I am not a military expert, but that seems like a suboptimal solution, to say the least?
North Korea’s direct involvement in Russia’s war still hasn’t resulted in any reaction from the United States, other than calling it a “very, very serious issue”.
“We don’t know what [Noth Korean soldiers] are gonna do,” National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said at a briefing. “We don’t know if they will deploy into combat or not.” For the first time in my life, I was in total agreement with a Fox News correspondent who pushed back with: “What else could they be there for?”
Outside of Ukraine, Russia has been busy rigging elections in Georgia and Moldova, two countries with chunks of territory occupied by Moscow.
In Georgia, the ruling Russian-linked party Georgian Dream claimed victory in a parliamentary election that the pro-western opposition and independent observers said was falsified. Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili said she does not recognize these “Russian elections” and called for mass protests. Both the EU and the United States encouraged investigations into voting irregularities and violence at the voting stations.
Moldova held two highly consequential votes on Oct. 20 – the first round of a presidential election, in which the pro-EU incumbent Maia Sandu faces the Russian-backed Alexandr Stoianoglo, and a referendum on whether to enshrine Moldova’s EU aspirations into the country’s constitution.
Russia tried to meddle in both: local authorities uncovered a $15 million scheme to buy votes of ordinary Moldovans and spread disinformation to skew the votes towards closer ties with Russia.
The effort seems to have failed, at least partially. Moldova’s pro-EU majority won in the referendum by just 11,000 votes; 50.38% of voters supported making Moldova’s European path a constitutional matter. The presidential election run-off is set for Nov. 3. I’ll bring you the results next week.
That will be all for today.
Cheers, and Glory to Ukraine,
– Yours Ukrainian