This Monday, January 31st, the United Nations headquarters in New York provided the scene for a tense showdown between the U.S. and Russia. A security council meeting had convened there to discuss Russia’s military buildup on the Ukrainian border. It marked the first time that all major parties involved in the debacle (Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine itself) faced each other publicly.
The U.S. had pushed for an open session to take place on January 31st, since on the following day, Russia would take over the council’s presidency from Norway. Russia objected to such a public meeting from the outset, preferring to hold talks behind closed doors on February 17th, the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Minsk II agreement. Russia immediately demanded a procedural vote, seeking to prevent it. Its attempt failed, however, and the debate went ahead.
In the statements that followed, the U.S. pointed to Russia’s buildup as undermining international peace and security. “Russia’s actions strike at the very heart of the UN Charter,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. “This is as clear and consequential a threat to peace and security as anyone can imagine.” She added that “Russia’s aggression today not only threatens Ukraine. It also threatens Europe. It threatens the international order.”
Arguing for continued efforts towards a diplomatic solution, Thomas-Greenfield emphasized that the UN “stands for the principle that one country cannot simply redraw another country’s borders by force,” and that “we continue to hope Russia chooses the path of diplomacy over the path of conflict in Ukraine. But we cannot just wait and see.”
Further elucidating the dangers naiveté poses, she referred to Russia’s “combat forces and special forces prepared to conduct offensive actions into Ukraine,” adding that “this is the largest, this is the largest—hear me clearly—mobilization of troops in Europe in decades. And, as we speak, Russia is sending even more forces and arms to join them.”
As Thomas-Greenfield spoke, back in Washington, President Joe Biden issued a statement from the White House:
If Russia is sincere about addressing our respective security concerns through dialogue, the United States and our allies and partners will continue to engage in good faith. If instead, Russia chooses to walk away from diplomacy and attack Ukraine, Russia will bear the responsibility, and it will face swift and severe consequences.
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the UN strenuously denied the allegations, and told the security council that the West’s talk of war was provocative and that they were “whipping up tensions and rhetoric and provoking escalation.” He accused the West of “waiting for it to happen as if you want to make your words become a reality. This, despite the fact that we are constantly rejecting these allegations.”
Nebenzya even cast doubt over the troop numbers reported, querying,
where did you get the figure of 100,000 troops that are deployed, as you said, on the Russian-Ukrainian border, although that is not the case? We have never cited that figure, we’ve never confirmed that figure.
He went on to term it as “not only unacceptable interference in the domestic affairs of our state, but also an attempt to mislead the international community on the situation in the region, and also the reason for the current global tensions.” Thomas-Greenfield denied Nebenzya’s allegations in turn, saying she could not let “this false equivalency go unchecked.”
China—a valued partner of Russia’s—buttressed the country’s distaste for holding the meeting. “The reason why the U.S. was asking the council to hold this open meeting was that Russia’s deployment of troops along the Ukrainian border posed a threat to international peace and security,” said Chinese UN Ambassador Zhang Jun. “China cannot align itself with this point of view.” Explaining his country’s position, Zhang said:
Russia has repeatedly stated that it has no plans to launch any military action. And Ukraine has made it clear that it does not need a war. Under such circumstances, what is the basis for the country’s concern to insist that there may be a war?
Chinese president Xi Jinping is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing during the Winter Olympics on February 4th. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “a lot of time will be spent on an exchange of views on international issues, including strategic stability in Europe, security guarantees for Russia, security in Europe, and Russia’s dialogue with the United States and NATO, and regional problems.”
While talking to the press after the debate, the Russian ambassador Nebenzya specified that Russian troops “are not at the Russian-Ukrainian border. They are stationed in their garrisons where they used to be before. We had the same situation in April this year and nobody made a fuss about it. But suddenly it became an escalation. There is no critical build-up compared to what used to happen in the previous years.” He furthermore urged the U.S. to “encourage Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements ‘which they sabotage all the time,’” and then reaffirmed Russia’s perception of the UN meeting as “a provocation.”
