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Friday, July 4, 2025

World opinion shifts against Russia as Ukraine worries grow

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1014 days ago
20220923
Belarus' Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei speaks during a high-level Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022, at United Nations headquarters. The tide of international opinion appears to have decisively shifted against Russia, as several non-aligned countries joined the United States and its allies in condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and its threats to the principles of the international rules-based order. Only one country, Belarus, a non-council member and Russia ally that was invited to participate, spoke in support of Russia, but also called for a quick end to the fighting, which it called a “tragedy.” (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Belarus' Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei speaks during a high-level Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022, at United Nations headquarters. The tide of international opinion appears to have decisively shifted against Russia, as several non-aligned countries joined the United States and its allies in condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and its threats to the principles of the international rules-based order. Only one country, Belarus, a non-council member and Russia ally that was invited to participate, spoke in support of Russia, but also called for a quick end to the fighting, which it called a “tragedy.” (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

 

NEW YORK (AP) — The tide of in­ter­na­tion­al opin­ion ap­pears to be de­ci­sive­ly shift­ing against Rus­sia, as a num­ber of non-aligned coun­tries are join­ing the Unit­ed States and its al­lies in con­demn­ing Moscow’s war in Ukraine and its threats to the prin­ci­ples of the in­ter­na­tion­al rules-based or­der.

West­ern of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly said that Rus­sia has be­come iso­lat­ed since in­vad­ing Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary. Un­til re­cent­ly, though, that was large­ly wish­ful think­ing. But on Tues­day, Wednes­day and Thurs­day, much of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty spoke out against the con­flict in a rare dis­play of uni­ty at the of­ten-frac­tured Unit­ed Na­tions.

The tide had al­ready ap­peared to be turn­ing against Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin even be­fore Thurs­day’s U.N. speech­es. Chi­nese and In­di­an lead­ers had been crit­i­cal of the war at a high-lev­el sum­mit last week in Uzbek­istan. And then the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly dis­re­gard­ed Rus­sia’s ob­jec­tions and vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to al­low Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy to be the on­ly leader to ad­dress the body re­mote­ly, in­stead of re­quir­ing him to ap­pear in per­son.

That shift against Rus­sia ac­cel­er­at­ed af­ter Putin on Wednes­day an­nounced the mo­bi­liza­tion of some ad­di­tion­al 300,000 troops to Ukraine, sig­nalling the un­like­li­hood of a quick end to the war. Putin al­so sug­gest­ed that nu­clear weapons may be an op­tion. That fol­lowed an an­nounce­ment of Rus­sia’s in­ten­tion to hold in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­da in sev­er­al oc­cu­pied Ukrain­ian re­gions with an eye to­ward pos­si­ble an­nex­a­tion.

Those an­nounce­ments came at the very mo­ment that the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, con­sid­ered the pre­mier event in the glob­al diplo­mat­ic cal­en­dar, was tak­ing place in New York.

Nu­mer­ous world lead­ers used their speech­es on Tues­day and Wednes­day to de­nounce Rus­sia’s war. That trend con­tin­ued Thurs­day both in the as­sem­bly hall and at the usu­al­ly deeply di­vid­ed U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, where, one by one, vir­tu­al­ly all of the 15 coun­cil mem­bers served up harsh crit­i­cism of Rus­sia—a coun­cil mem­ber—for ag­gra­vat­ing sev­er­al al­ready se­vere glob­al crises and im­per­illing the foun­da­tions of the world body.

The ap­par­ent shift in opin­ion of­fers some hope to Ukraine and its West­ern al­lies that in­creas­ing iso­la­tion will add pres­sure on Putin to ne­go­ti­ate a peace. But few are un­du­ly op­ti­mistic. Putin has staked his lega­cy on the Ukraine war, and few ex­pect him to back down. And Rus­sia is hard­ly iso­lat­ed. Many of its al­lies de­pend on it for en­er­gy, food and mil­i­tary as­sis­tance and are like­ly to stand by Putin re­gard­less of what hap­pens in Ukraine.

Still, it was strik­ing to hear Rus­sia’s nom­i­nal friends like Chi­na and In­dia, fol­low­ing up on last week’s re­marks, speak of grave con­cerns they have about the con­flict and its im­pact on glob­al food and en­er­gy short­ages as well as threats to the con­cepts of sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty that are en­shrined in the U.N. Char­ter.

Brazil reg­is­tered sim­i­lar con­cerns. Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, Chi­na and South Africa make up the so-called BRICS bloc of coun­tries, which has of­ten shunned or out­right op­posed West­ern ini­tia­tives and views on in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions.

On­ly one coun­try, Be­larus, a non-coun­cil mem­ber and Rus­sia al­ly that was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate, spoke in sup­port of Rus­sia, but al­so called for a quick end to the fight­ing, which it called a “tragedy.”

“We hear a lot about the di­vi­sions among coun­tries at the Unit­ed Na­tions,” Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken said. “But re­cent­ly, what’s strik­ing is the re­mark­able uni­ty among mem­ber states when it comes to Rus­sia’s war on Ukraine. Lead­ers from coun­tries de­vel­op­ing and de­vel­oped, big and small, North and South have spo­ken in the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly about the con­se­quences of the war and the need to end it.”

“Even a num­ber of na­tions that main­tain close ties with Moscow have said pub­licly that they have se­ri­ous ques­tions and con­cerns about Pres­i­dent Putin’s on­go­ing in­va­sion,” Blinken said.

Chi­nese For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi was care­ful not to con­demn the war but said that Chi­na’s firm stance is that “the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of all coun­tries should be re­spect­ed. The pur­pos­es of the prin­ci­ples of the U.N. Char­ter should be ob­served.”

In­di­an Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter S. Jais­hankar said, “the tra­jec­to­ry of the Ukraine con­flict is a mat­ter of pro­found con­cern for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.” He called for ac­count­abil­i­ty for atroc­i­ties and abus­es com­mit­ted in Ukraine. “If egre­gious at­tacks com­mit­ted in broad day­light are left un­pun­ished, this coun­cil must re­flect on the sig­nals we are send­ing on im­puni­ty. There must be con­sis­ten­cy if we are to en­sure cred­i­bil­i­ty,” he said.

And Brazil­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Car­los Al­ber­to Fran­ca said im­me­di­ate ef­forts to end the war are crit­i­cal. “The con­tin­u­a­tion of the hos­til­i­ties en­dan­gers the lives of in­no­cent civil­ians and jeop­ar­dizes the food and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty of mil­lions of fam­i­lies in oth­er re­gions, es­pe­cial­ly in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries,” he said. “The risks of es­ca­la­tion aris­ing for the cur­rent dy­nam­ics of the con­flict are sim­ply too great, and its con­se­quences for the world or­der un­pre­dictable.”

For­eign min­is­ters and top of­fi­cials from Al­ba­nia, Britain, France, Ire­land, Gabon, Ger­many, Ghana, Kenya, Mex­i­co and Nor­way de­liv­ered sim­i­lar re­bukes.

“Rus­sia’s ac­tions are bla­tant vi­o­la­tion of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions,” said Al­ban­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ol­ta Xhac­ka. “We all tried to pre­vent this con­flict. We could not, but we must not fail to hold Rus­sia ac­count­able.”

Mex­i­can For­eign Sec­re­tary Marce­lo Ebrard called the in­va­sion a “fla­grant breach of in­ter­na­tion­al law” and Irish for­eign min­is­ter Si­mon Coveney said: “If we fail to hold Rus­sia ac­count­able, we send a mes­sage to large coun­tries that they can prey on their neigh­bours with im­puni­ty.”

Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov was un­apolo­getic and de­fen­sive at the same time and specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed Ze­len­skyy. Cit­ing a phrase of­ten at­trib­uted to Pres­i­dent Franklin Roo­sevelt, Lavrov called Ze­len­skyy “a bas­tard,” but said West­ern lead­ers re­gard­ed him as “our bas­tard.”

He re­peat­ed a long list of Rus­sia’s com­plaints about Ukraine and ac­cused West­ern coun­tries of us­ing Ukraine for an­ti-Rus­sia ac­tiv­i­ties and poli­cies.

“Every­thing I’ve said to­day sim­ply con­firms that the de­ci­sion to con­duct the spe­cial mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion was in­evitable,” Lavrov said, fol­low­ing Russ­ian prac­tice of not call­ing the in­va­sion a war.

Rus­sia has de­nied be­ing iso­lat­ed and the for­eign min­istry used so­cial me­dia to pub­li­cize a num­ber of ap­par­ent­ly cor­dial meet­ings that Lavrov has held with for­eign min­is­ter col­leagues at the UN in re­cent days.

Still, Blinken and his col­leagues from oth­er NA­TO na­tions seized on what they be­lieve to be grow­ing op­po­si­tion to and im­pa­tience with Putin.

And, sev­er­al speak­ers, in­clud­ing Ukrain­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Dmytro Kule­ba and British For­eign Sec­re­tary James Clev­er­ly, point­ed out that Lavrov skipped the meet­ing ex­cept for his speak­ing slot.

“I no­tice that Russ­ian diplo­mats flee al­most as quick­ly as Russ­ian sol­diers,” Kule­ba said, re­fer­ring to Lavrov’s hasty ex­it along with re­cent Russ­ian troop re­treats in Ukraine.

PoliticsUnited NationsRussiaUkraineUkraine Russia WarDiplomacy


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