Pix Credit Times of Israel

 Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has been left the perhaps unenviable task of running around the globe seeking aid from states and other actors who are as interested in being begged and lectured, and cajoled, and complemented as they are in actually opening their larders of useful objects and sharing them with Ukraine. That is an old story.  Dependent states--even those well thought of--are always in search of patrons.  And patrons enjoy that the objects of their largesse perform, and perform well.  Over the course of the Russo-Ukraine war this has acquired something of a ritual character of President Zelenskyy has "sung for his supper" in virtually every major  and involved capital in the world.

"Sing for your supper, /And you'll get breakfast/Songbirds always eat/If their song is sweet to hear. . .So sing and you'll be fed."(Sing for your supper, Lyrics by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers (1938) YouTube original performance Rodgers & Hart - "Sing For Your Supper" from "The Boys From Syracuse").

This has acquired a more intense character in the face of Russian actions in Ukraine that appear to suggest a host of criminal actions. It is unlikely that the Russian forces will change their behaviors in the future, and they do not appear ready to retreat back behind Russian borders as they existed  before 2014.  This situation added urgency and direction to a quite moving and blunt speech delivered by President Zelenskyy to the UN Security Council (Speech by the President of Ukraine at a meeting of the UN Security Council). While in most other venues President Zelenskyy has been focusing on singing for a supper consisting of war materials and actions designed top isolate and starve Russia into reconsidering the value of this adventure, before the UN Security Council President Zelenskyy  suggested something more basic.  In the face of mounting evidence of war crimes and the general brutality of the Russian invasion strategy on the ground, President Zelenskyy asked out loud what had been on the minds of many--has the UN system now broken down--and is that breakdown sufficiently fundamental that the justification for the continued existence of the organization ought to be considered (and thus considered replaced with something more effective).

So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened. So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee? It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively. * * * We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill. Which undermines the whole architecture of global security. Which allows evil to go unpunished and spread the world. Destroying everything that can work for peace and security. If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of arms to ensure its security, not on international law, not on international institutions. Then, the UN can simply be dissolved. . . . Are you ready for the dissolving of the UN? Do you think that the time of international law has passed? (Speech by the President of Ukraine)

These are indeed questions that are worthy of sustained consideration.  Though the object here might have been to arose sufficiently strong feelings of shame and guilt to move the UN to act in some way, it also poses those fundamental questions about the way in which the collective of states manages their relations, and the price they are willing to pay to achieve core objectives.  It also suggests the value of a necessary review of the form and value of a generations long process of legalization and judicialization that appears, when it is needed most, to produce something less than a satisfactory response.  Or perhaps it has--it might well be that the current state is the optimal result of thus system--that is that the system produces the legitimating forms (through law and rule) that effectively shields states form those feelings of shame and guilt as one of their own is subjected ls and elevated discourse of a victory that was not that of those who will gloat most) than at prevention and mitigation (though one can debate the value of sanctions in this respect--that certainly is something the ambiguity of which plagues the Biden Administration, see here and here). 

But of course there is much more going on here.  Perhaps most importantly is the continued curation of the cases that Ukraine is building against Russia--and Russians--with respect to their criminal activity in connection with their invasion (and including the invasion itself). To the extent that speeches like this produce further pronouncements from the General Assembly (the Security Council is a lost cause--though that is useful too in Ukraine's campaigns against Russia), these can be used in helping to shape consideration in judicial fora (eg the ICJ and ICC) and perhaps in IOs, where the participation of Russia may be challenged (beyond the Human Rights Council).   The cumulative effect of these, if successful, might be to strip Russia of effective participation at the supra-national level as a first tier state. The speech and especially its imagery can also be used to leverage Ukrainian efforts to reach and shape popular opinion.  This is critically important in shaping the response of leaders of liberal democratic states. Ukraine also creates a public record--not just of the injustice of the actions taken against it, but of the indifference--and the term is not used lightly here--of the rest of the globe, an indifference that ranges from sympathetic timidity to facilitation of the efforts of the Russians. All of these are baselines that can be the basis of middle and lower tier state rethinking of their relationship to apex states in post-global re-arrangements of relationships of dependence. And it is a reminder that technology can at times be the great leveler of power relationships. Russia, of course, stubbornly clinging to 19th and 20th century tropes of territorial empire, can do little to counter and indeed contributes to the discursive, visual and conceptual victories of the Ukrainians. That will not change--though it is a warning to those who cling to 19th and 20th century performance tropes.

President Zelenskyy is correct, of course, though perhaps foreshadowing a conversation that is to occur a little more forward in time--the state system reconstructed on principles of equality and bounded in a grand project of global convergence is no longer workable.  And that end of the global convergence era also suggests that the great institutional manifestation of that older era notion also no longer works in the new era. The Russian invasion and global fear of ending it suggests both the characteristics of parts of the new era of post global relations of power but also of the inability of the older institutions to adjust to changing conditions.  In this context he begins to offer, to tease, something like a set of ideas that may be is use to states now caught in the middle of this global transformation. It may be that as the global community changes, and changes its institutions, to better respond to the new era, middle tier states might now re-consider the value of stronger mutual alignments.  This is not a reprise of the Bandung Conference or its sensibilities, but something different--the development of a sub apex collective of similarly situated states that can act to serve its own interests against those of the hub imperial centers.  It is too early for this, but at the same time almost too late as the global community moves out of the old and into its new era. 

The text of the speech follow.

Speech by the President of Ukraine at a meeting of the UN Security Council

5 April 2022 - 21:07

Dear Mrs. President!

Dear Mr. Secretary General!

Dear members of the Security Council and other participants of the meeting!

Thank you for the opportunity.

I am sure that all the representatives of the UN member states will hear me today.

Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from the troops of the Russian Federation.

It is difficult to find a war crime that the occupiers have not committed there.

The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our state.

They executed women outside the houses when approaching and simply calling someone alive.

They killed whole families - adults and children. And they tried to burn their bodies.

I am addressing you on behalf of the people who honor the memory of the deceased everyday. Everyday, in the morning.

The memory of the killed civilians.

Who were shot in the back of the head or in the eye after being tortured. Who were shot just on the streets.

Who were thrown into the well, so that they die there in suffering.

Who were killed in apartments, houses, blown up by grenades. Who were crushed by tanks in civilian cars in the middle of the road. For fun.

Whose limbs were cut off, whose throat was cut. Who were raped and killed in front of their own children.

Their tongues were torn out only because they did not hear from them what they wanted to hear.

How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?

Except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

It destroys the internal unity of states.

Destroys state borders.

Denies the right of more than a dozen peoples on two continents to self-determination and independent state life. Pursues a consistent policy of destroying ethnic and religious diversity.

Inflames wars and deliberately wages them in such a way as to kill as many ordinary civilians as possible. To destroy as many ordinary peaceful cities as possible. To leave in the country where it sends its troops only ruins and mass graves. You've seen it all.

Promotes hatred at the state level and seeks to export it to other countries through its system of propaganda and political corruption.

Provokes a global food crisis that could lead to famine in Africa and Asia, and will certainly end in large-scale political chaos in countries where food price stability is a key factor of domestic security.

So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened.

So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?

It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.

Now the world has seen what the Russian military did in Bucha while keeping our city under occupation. But the world has yet to see what they have done in other occupied cities, in other occupied areas of our country.

Geography may be different, but cruelty is the same. Crimes are the same.

And responsibility must be inevitable.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

I would like to remind you of the first article of the first chapter of the UN Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? To maintain peace. And to force to peace. Now the UN Charter is being violated literally from the first article. And if so, what is the point of all other articles?

Today, it is as a result of Russia's actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed.

Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes.

They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities.

They are even deliberately blowing up shelters where civilians are hiding from air strikes. They are deliberately creating conditions in the temporarily occupied territories so that as many civilians as possible are killed there.

The massacre in our city of Bucha is just one, unfortunately, of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for 41 days.

And there are many other such places that the world has yet to find out the full truth of: Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Okhtyrka, Borodyanka and dozens of other Ukrainian communities, each of which is like Bucha.

I know, and you know very well, what the representatives of Russia will say in response to the accusations of these crimes. They have said this many times. The most illustrative was after the downing of a Malaysian Boeing over Donbas by Russian forces with Russian weapons. Or during the war in Syria.

They will blame everyone, just to justify themselves. They will say that there are different versions, and which of them is true is allegedly impossible to establish yet. They will even say that the bodies of those killed were allegedly “planted”, and all the videos are staged.

But. Now is the year 2022. There is conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. It is possible to conduct a full, transparent investigation.

That is what we are interested in.

Maximum access of journalists. Maximum cooperation with international institutions. Involvement of the International Criminal Court. Full truth, full responsibility.

I am sure that every state in the UN system should be interested in this. For what? In order to punish once and for all those who consider themselves privileged, consider themselves unpunished. Hence, to show all other potential war criminals in the world that they will inevitably be punished as well. If the biggest is punished, everyone will be punished.

Why did Russia come to Ukraine, tell me?

I will answer. Russia's leadership feels like colonizers - as in ancient times. They need our wealth and our people. Russia has already deported tens of thousands of our citizens to its territory. Then there will be hundreds. It abducted more than two thousand children. Simply abducted thousands of children. And continues to do so. Russia wants to turn Ukrainians into silent slaves.

The Russian militaries are openly looting the cities and villages they have captured. This is looting of the highest scale. They steal everything from food to gold earrings they just rip out with blood.

We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill.

Which undermines the whole architecture of global security.

Which allows evil to go unpunished and spread the world. Destroying everything that can work for peace and security.

If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of arms to ensure its security, not on international law, not on international institutions.

Then, the UN can simply be dissolved.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Are you ready for the dissolving of the UN? Do you think that the time of international law has passed?

If your answer is no, you need to act now, act immediately.

The power of the UN Charter must be restored immediately.

The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the right of veto is not a right to kill. So that there is a fair representation of all regions of the world in the Security Council.

The aggressor must be forced to peace immediately. Determination is needed. The chain of mass killings from Syria to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Yemen and Libya should have been stopped a long time ago to be honest.

If tyranny had ever received such a response to the war it had unleashed that it would have ceased to exist and a fair peace would have been guaranteed after it, the world would have changed for sure.

And then, perhaps, we would not have a war, a war in my country. Against our nation, the Ukrainian nation. Against people.

But the world watched and did not want to see the occupation of Crimea, or even before - the war against Georgia, or even earlier - the alienation from Moldova of the entire Transnistrian region. It also didn’t want to see how Russia was preparing the ground for other conflicts and wars near its borders.

How to stop it?

Immediately bring the Russian military and those who gave them orders to justice for war crimes in Ukraine.

Everyone who gave criminal orders and fulfilled them by killing people will face a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials.

I want to remind Russian diplomats that a man like von Ribbentrop has not avoided punishment after World War II.

And I also want to remind the architects of Russia's criminal policy that punishment has reached Adolf Eichmann as well.

None of the culprits will escape. No one.

But the main thing is that today is the time to transform the system, the core of which is the United Nations. To do this, we propose to convene a global conference. And we ask to do it already in peaceful Kyiv - in order to decide.

How we will reform the world security system.

How we will really guarantee the inviolability of universally recognized borders and the integrity of states.

How we will ensure the rule of international law.

It is now clear that the goals set in San Francisco in 1945 during the creation of a global international security organization have not been achieved. And it is impossible to achieve them without reforms.

Therefore, we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace.

Prevent aggression and force aggressors to peace. Have the determination and ability to punish if the principles of peace are violated.

There can be no more exceptions, privileges. Everyone must be equal. All participants in international relations. Regardless of economic strength, geographical area and individual ambitions.

The power of peace must become dominant. The power of justice and the power of security. As humanity has always dreamed of.

Ukraine is ready to provide a platform for one of the main offices of the updated security system.

Just as the Geneva office specializes in human rights, just as the Nairobi office specializes in the field of environmental protection, the Kyiv U-24 Office can specialize in preventive measures to maintain peace.

I want to remind you of our peaceful mission in Afghanistan. When, at our own expense, we Ukrainians evacuated more than a thousand people from this country. And it was the hottest phase. But people needed help - and Ukraine came. Just like other states.

We evacuated people of different nationalities, different faiths. Afghans, citizens of European countries, USA, Canada. We did not distinguish who needs help, whether these are our people or not. We saved everyone.

If every time there was a need everyone in the world was confident that help would come, the world would be definitely safer.

Therefore, Ukraine has the necessary moral right to propose a reform of the world security system.

We have proven that we help others not only in good times, but also in dark times.

And now we need decisions from the Security Council. For peace in Ukraine. If you do not know how to adopt this decision, you can do two things.

Remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war from blocking decisions about its own aggression, its own war. And then do everything that can establish peace.

Or show how you can reformat and really work for peace.

Or if your current format is unalterable and there is simply no way out, then the only option would be to dissolve yourself altogether.

I am convinced that you can do without the third option.

Ukraine needs peace. We need peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace.

And finally, I’m asking you to watch the video. A short one.

A video of what has come to replace your power because someone alone can abuse his rights.

This is what impunity leads to.

If possible - watch this video. Because there is no opportunity for everyone to come to us and see it. So watch it.

Thank you.