UN seeks ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ in Ukraine: Guterres

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — U.N. chief Antonio Guterres said Monday the global body is seeking a humanitarian ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, as the civilian toll continues to rise a month after Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.

Guterres told reporters he had asked U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths “immediately to explore with the parties involved the possible agreements and arrangements for a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine.”

He said he hoped Griffiths would go to both Moscow and Kyiv as soon as possible after he returns from a mission to Afghanistan.

Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and around 10 million have fled their homes since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

Guterres condemned the civilian toll and displacement, as well as the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure and global ripple effects of the conflict that have sent food and energy prices soaring.

“This must stop,” he said, emphasizing, however, that “the solution to this humanitarian tragedy is not humanitarian. It is political.” He appealed for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, to allow for progress in serious political negotiations.”

A cessation of hostilities would also “help to address the global consequences of this war, which risk compounding the deep hunger crisis in many developing countries” already struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

Last week, the U.N. General Assembly adopted by an overwhelming majority a non-binding resolution that demands an immediate halt to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Talks between representatives of both sides in Turkey have so far failed to produce a hoped-for ceasefire, and Ukrainian authorities have sounded the alarm ahead of their resumption this week over the dire humanitarian crisis in the besieged city of Mariupol.

Meanwhile, direct talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be “counterproductive,” the Russian foreign minister said Monday, as delegations prepared for Turkey-hosted talks on Moscow’s military operation.

Putin “has said he has never refused to meet President Zelenskyy. The only thing that he considers fundamentally important is for these meetings to be well prepared,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised comments to journalists, after Zelenskyy called for a meeting with his Russian counterpart.

Lavrov said the current crisis has “been brewing so long, all these years, that a huge number of problems have built up, therefore just meeting and exchanging views on what you think and I think, that would just be counterproductive now.”