NEW YORK — President Biden pleaded with global leaders Tuesday to align behind the U.S. and its allies to confront Russia’s “naked aggression” against Ukraine, warning that no country will be safe if Russian forces are not driven from Ukrainian territory.
Mr. Biden addressed the U.N. General Assembly on the first day of the weeklong gathering while facing growing skepticism in Washington and capitals in the developing world over aid and military support for Ukraine, whose grinding war with Russia has passed the 18-month mark.
“If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?” Mr. Biden asked in a speech to the assembly of world leaders in Manhattan.
“I would respectfully suggest the answer is no. You have to stand up to this aggression today to deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow,” the president told the audience at U.N. headquarters.
This year’s annual gathering is notably absent of certain key leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Biden addressed the gathering hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to the stage to deliver a fiery speech in which he accused Russia of committing “genocide” by abducting thousands of children from Ukraine and called on the United Nations not to tolerate the “evil” undergirding Moscow’s actions.
Polish President Andrzej Duda offered rhetorical backup by describing Russia’s invasion as “evil.” “The crimes must be accounted for and the perpetrators punished,” he said in his address.
Others taking to the stage at U.N. headquarters included Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who declared that “Brazil is back” and sought to cast himself as a prominent leader of the Global South developing world.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also addressed the General Assembly on Tuesday, a day after Tehran freed five Americans as part of a politically risky prisoner swap in which Mr. Biden released nearly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
No-shows
Mr. Biden spoke at the start of a two-day trip to New York. He is pushing a narrative that the United States is working overtime on his watch to bring nations together to confront the full range of challenges facing humanity, including conflicts and food insecurity in Africa, gender inequality, climate change and threats to democracy.
He said the United States is among nations that depend on one another while trying to provide a “baseline for responsible global leadership.”
“The United States seeks a more secure, more prosperous, more equitable world for all people because we know our future is bound up with yours,” Mr. Biden said.
The message likely will be embraced by other leaders participating in the marathon of speeches that will mark the General Assembly through next Tuesday. Risks are also high that the message will fall on deaf ears at a moment that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and others have said has generated rising “multipolarity” and division on the global stage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are among key U.S. allies slated to address the General Assembly.
The absences of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi have cast a shadow over the gathering. Washington has pinpointed the two leaders as promoters of international tensions, conflict and gridlock in multinational forums.
Leaders of other countries also have skipped this year’s General Assembly and sent lower-powered delegations to New York.
The Russian president decided not to travel amid speculation that he could be arrested under a warrant issued in March by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
The warrant accuses Mr. Putin of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Moscow has dismissed the claim that thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred from their homeland to Russian-controlled areas.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, widely considered a geopolitically consequential leader of the Global South, is not attending the General Assembly. Nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia appear to be increasingly on the fence over whether to align with the Biden administration on global development, finance priorities, the Ukraine war and other matters.
The leaders of Britain and France are also skipping the gathering. That means the General Assembly and all the backroom diplomatic meetings that come with it are playing out without the top leaders from four of the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent member nations.
U.N. reform
Mr. Biden reiterated his position that the Security Council badly needs reform. It has been hamstrung by divisions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the past 18 months.
“In my address to this body last year, I announced that the United States would support expanding the Security Council,” the president said. “We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus at the council.”
He said Washington is “working across the board” to make other global institutions “more responsive, more effective and more inclusive.”
Mr. Biden pointed to changes at the World Bank, the Washington-based global financing entity. He said he recently asked Congress to “expand World Bank financing by $25 billion.”
“We’ve taken significant steps to reform and scale up the World Bank, expand its financing to low- and middle-income countries so it can help boost progress toward meeting the sustainable development goals, and better address interconnected challenges like climate change and fragility,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden offered cautious remarks on China amid rising tension between Washington and Beijing over global trade, a growing China-Russia strategic alliance and rising conflicts over the status of Taiwan.
“When it comes to China,” he said, “we seek to responsibly manage the competition between our two countries so it does not tip into conflict.”
He said U.S. officials “stand ready” to work with China on common issues.
Ukraine war focus
The most dramatic moments were during the speech by Mr. Zelenskyy, who made repeated pointed references to Mr. Putin.
“Evil cannot be trusted,” Mr. Zelenskyy said before insinuating that Mr. Putin was behind the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the wily leader of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries and onetime Putin confidant who died with a group of top aides in a mysterious plane crash last month.
“Ask Prigozhin if one bets on Putin’s promises,” the Ukrainian president said.
“When hatred is weaponized against one nation, it never stops there,” Mr. Zelenskyy said during a harsh and at times wandering commentary.
The war and Ukraine’s slow-advancing counteroffensive in the south and east likely will be at the center of discussions this week when Mr. Zelenskyy visits Washington. Kyiv has been under mounting pressure to ease doubts that billions of dollars in U.S. and NATO military and economic aid are being spent wisely.
The U.S. has contributed about $70 billion to Ukraine’s effort to fight off the Russian invasion launched in February 2022. The financial support has been met with increasing resistance from some Republicans on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, has balked at writing what he called “a blank check” to support Kyiv.
Mr. Zelenskyy has recently made global headlines by purging several top officials from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
He said the Kremlin has weaponized oil, gas and Ukrainian grain supplies to the global market. He pleaded with world leaders to give his embattled nation leverage over Russia in any negotiations toward ending the war.
“For the first time in modern history, we have a real chance to end the aggression on the terms of the nation which was attacked,” he said. His peace plan has struggled to gain significant international buy-in since it was introduced nearly a year ago.
Mr. Zelenskyy is slated to discuss the plan at a special session of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “This is a real chance for every nation to ensure that aggression against your state … will end not because your land will be divided and you will be forced to submit to military or political pressure, but because your territory and sovereignty will be fully restored.”
Moscow has shown no appetite for the Ukrainian plan, which calls for removing all Russian forces from Ukraine and returning all Ukrainian territory to Kyiv. That includes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Mr. Zelenskyy highlighted Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians, including children.
“We know the names of tens of thousands of children and have evidence of hundreds of thousands of others kidnapped by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine and later deported,” he said.
“We are trying to get [the] children back home. But time, time goes by,” he said. “What will happen with them?
“Those children in Russia are taught to hate Ukraine, and all ties with their families are broken,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “This is clearly a genocide.”
• Ben Wolfgang and Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this report.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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