As if it were the answer to a guessing game, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, stressed that his Russian counterpart, Serguei Lavrov, has been one of the major absences in these three days of activity at the headquarters of the UN on the occasion of the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
From this absence, he concluded that it shows that Russia "does not want the voice of diplomacy and has opted for the voice of arms." Lavrov lost this Friday the opportunity in the Security Council to defend the Chinese peace plan presented hours before in Beijing. The satisfactory reception given by Moscow to this document contrasts with the Western disqualification.
Albares stressed that China is a great power, a permanent member of the Council, which is why it has the right to veto, and as such its position is very important and it is good that it talks about peace. But the Spanish leader took away any relevance or value. “To end this war we don't need any peace plan. We just need Vladimir Putin to order his soldiers to return to their positions within their borders,” he remarked.
The minister expressed himself in this way at a press conference at the United Nations headquarters, minutes before embarking on the return flight and after having participated as a guest in the special Security Council for the anniversary of the conflict and where it was verified that the positions between Ukraine and Russia are so antagonistic that they even fought over the minute of silence in tribute to the victims.
Albares also participated on Wednesday and Thursday in the special General Assembly in which a resolution, without legal value, was approved, calling for the cessation of hostilities, a lasting peace and, therefore, the withdrawal of the invading army.
The resolution was adopted with a large majority of 141 votes (more than two thirds), 7 against, with 32 abstentions, a group that includes China, India and South Africa. It is a result almost identical to that of the other four occasions in which the Assembly has ruled on this matter. That does not prevent there are those who want to see the glass half empty because the same dynamic is maintained. Albares is one of those who, like the rest of the western bloc, considers that the glass is much more than half full.
“These three days of fully deployed diplomacy have made it clear that Russia is losing the battle of diplomacy resoundingly. Russia remains isolated,” she said. “The majority have not changed because they reject brute force and the violation of the United Nations charter,” she added.
"There is no Western strategy," he replied. “This is the war of one man, Vladimir Putin, he started it and it is maintained by him. If it were for a large majority of countries, this war would never have started and would end today, ”he insisted.
At the UN headquarters, an institution that should play a key role in resolving the dispute over Western Sahara, Albares indicated that it was one of the issues he discussed with the organization's secretary general, António Guterres. Despite Spain's change of position and its rapprochement with Morocco, Albares repeated once again that "we are at the disposal of the UN and its special envoy Sttafan de Mistura to help them in any way possible." He insisted that Spain will support the solution found by the United Nations, in its central role.
