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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will first travel to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and then to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a bid to halt the two-month-long war in Ukraine and establish a ceasefire.
At a press conference in New York on Friday, Guterres’ associate spokeswoman Eri Kaneko said that the UN chief would head to the Russian capital on Tuesday to meet Putin as well as have a working meeting and lunch with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“He hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently,” Kaneko said.
Guterres would also meet with Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, and staff at UN agencies to discuss ramping up humanitarian assistance efforts, she said.
Kaneko stressed that the UN chief in both visits would aim to discuss “discuss “steps that can be taken right now” to halt the fighting and help people get to safety. Guterres “hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently.”
Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, following Moscow’s recognition of self-declared Lugansk and Donetsk republics, collectively known as Donbass. The two breakaway regions, located in eastern Ukraine, are largely populated by ethnic Russians.
Since the onset of the operation, more than five million people have fled Ukraine, and thousands have been killed. Furthermore, there are increasing concerns for around 100,000 civilians still living in the blockaded port city of Mariupol, located in southeastern Ukraine and on the north coast of the strategic Sea of Azov.
The ill-fated city has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting between the two sides. On Thursday, Putin announced that the strategic city was “liberated.”
The fall of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops since March 1, enables Moscow to open a land route to the Crimean Peninsula, which joined Russia in 2014.
“The secretary-general is not so much disappointed that his own personal call was not heeded, but more that there has been no truce, that civilians cannot leave besieged areas and that the aid that the UN and our partners are ready to deliver to these besieged areas cannot go in,” Kaneko further said on Friday.
Earlier this week, called for a four-day Orthodox Easter humanitarian pause in fighting in the east European country beginning on Thursday to allow for the safe passage of civilians from areas of conflict and the delivery of humanitarian aid to hard-hit areas. His appeal, however, was thrown out.
The UN Security Council has practically been hamstrung over the war since Russia is one of its five permanent members with a veto.
Back in March, 141 countries in an emergency session of the General Assembly supported a resolution denouncing the war, calling on Moscow to “immediately, completely and unconditionally” withdraw its forces from Ukraine.
The conflict in Ukraine has provoked a unanimous response from Western countries, which have imposed a long list of sanctions on Moscow. The Kremlin says it will halt the operation instantly if Kyiv meets Russia’s list of demands, including never applying to join NATO.
