Guterres Shamefully Meets with Putin and Lukashenko

In March of 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin because he “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute).”

Putin’s crimes neither start nor end with that one instance; he well deserves to be called what the late Sen. John McCain called him, “a murderer and a thug.” It is less than a year since Alexei Navalny died in one of Putin’s prisons.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, actually described pretty well Putin’s actions in his own opening speech at the U.N. General Assembly this year:  

The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable. Today, a growing number of governments and others feel entitled to a “get out of jail free” card. They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter. They can turn a blind eye to international human rights conventions or the decisions of international courts. They can thumb their nose at international humanitarian law. They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people. And nothing will happen.

That's Putin to a T. With those words in mind, and the ICC indictment outstanding, it is simply indefensible that Guterres went out of his way to attend the BRICs meeting in Kazan, Russia this past week. There he met with Putin—see the photo—and such other worthies as Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus—whom he actually hugged.

As to the latter meeting, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrelius Landsbergis said this:

Guterres must admit that he was wrong and take responsibility, both when he decided not to go to the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland and now, when he went to see the wanted war criminal Putin and grovelled with both him and his accomplice Lukashenko….Guterres is no longer accepted as an honest broker, and if he decides to resign, we would certainly not be the ones to discourage him from doing so.

Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė called Guterres’ conduct “pathetic” and added that:

The United Nations has adopted a number of resolutions in the General Assembly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and such behaviour is incomprehensible, to say the least.

As to Guterres and Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to host him in Kyiv following his meeting with Putin, and a Ukrainian official said “He shook hands with him [Putin]. He smiled. He was asked to come to promote the BRICS summit even more. He was used by them, and he seemed happy to be used.”

Guterres seems intent on eliminating every single shred of legitimacy his office holds. I noted an October 23 X posting by him:

In our troubled world, hope is not enough. Hope requires action & multilateral solutions for peace, prosperity & a thriving planet. Hope requires all countries working as one. Hope requires the UN.

That was just before his Putin and Lukashenko meetings. For Ukrainians and many others, hope requires a Secretary General who has some principles and some standards, and who avoids the awful moral equivalency that Guterres has embraced. Unfortunately his term runs to December 2026, but the Lithuanians have it right: “if he decides to resign, we would certainly not be the ones to discourage him from doing so.”