On September 24th, the next-to-last day of the world leaders’ annual gathering at United Nations headquarters in New York, the headline speakers addressing the General Assembly were the foreign ministers of China and Russia. Foreign Ministers Wang Yi of China and Sergey Lavrov of Russia excused their autocratic regimes’ aggressive behavior and condemned anyone who would try to meddle in what they consider to be their own internal affairs.
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, discussed China’s reunification plans for Taiwan at some length. “China will continue to endeavor to achieve peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and greatest efforts,” he said. “To realize this goal, we must combat ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities with the firmest resolve and take the most forceful steps to repulse interference by external groups.” This was a veiled warning to the United States to butt out of what the Chinese regime considers to be a matter vital to protecting its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
“China abides by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has made relentless efforts to protect and strengthen its human rights.”
“Since ancient times,” China’s foreign minister declared, “Taiwan has been an inalienable part of China’s territory. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity has never been severed and the fact that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and same China has never changed. All of us Chinese have never ceased our efforts to realize China’s reunification.”
Without mentioning the United States specifically this time, Wang Yi repeated a criticism that the Chinese regime has often leveled at the U.S. He said that democracy and human rights should not be used as “tools or weapons to achieve political ends” and decried “bullying.”
Wang Yi claimed that “China abides by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has made relentless efforts to protect and strengthen its human rights.” Wang Yi said this with a straight face despite the fact that at least a million Uyghur and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang have been detained against their will in what amount to concentration camps. It has been reported that some detainees have been tortured and that China has been forcibly mass sterilizing Uyghur women. The Chinese regime has also set about destroying mosques and banning traditional religious practices. Taken together, the Chinese regime’s actions have been much closer to committing genocide than making “relentless efforts to protect and strengthen its human rights.”
Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call for “the international community to pursue common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries,” while sidestepping Russia’s invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. In his only reference to Ukraine, Wang Yi said that China “supports all efforts conducive to the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis” and urged negotiations. That is hard to do when one side – Russia – continues to aim missiles at civilian populations and infrastructure. Holding sham referendums as a pretext for illegally annexing occupied Ukrainian territory is not conducive to a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis.
Foreign Minister Lavrov also mocked the West for “throwing a fit” over the referendums being conducted in the Donbas and other Russian-controlled areas
When it was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s turn to speak, he came out swinging against the United States and its Western allies and shifted the blame for the Ukraine crisis to them. “The United States and allies want to stop the march of history. . . . they’ve erected themselves into an almost envoy of God on earth without any obligations but only the sacred right to act with impunity wherever they want,” Mr. Lavrov declared.
Russia’s foreign minister hewed to the Russian regime’s party line in claiming that the so-called “special military operation” was launched for two purposes. The first purpose was to protect Russians and other people living in eastern Ukraine who wanted to preserve the Russian way of life. Mr. Lavrov alleged that Kyiv had sought to ban the Russian language, education, and culture and had launched attacks against people living in Donbas. The second purpose of the so-called “special military operation” was to eliminate threats to Russian security allegedly caused by the expansion of the United States-led NATO military alliance eastward, closer to the Russian borders. He harkened back to what he described as the “bloody coup” by the current “Kyiv regime” in 2014 and accused Western powers of engaging in "grotesque" Russophobia with the intent to “destroy and fracture Russia.”
Foreign Minister Lavrov also mocked the West for “throwing a fit” over the referendums being conducted in the Donbas and other Russian-controlled areas on the question of whether to secede from Ukraine and become a part of the Russian Federation.
After his speech to the General Assembly, Foreign Minister Lavrov strode into the UN’s press briefing room to hold a press conference. Most of the questions, as expected, focused on Ukraine. He defended the referendums in four eastern Ukrainian regions in part as a response to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s declaration last year that those people in Ukraine who want to be Russian should go to Russia.
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Mr. Lavrov insisted that “democratic” processes were being implemented in conducting the referendums and that Russia will support the wishes of the people in deciding whether to annex the four regions in eastern Ukraine. When asked how Russia can reconcile its claim to respect the UN Charter’s principle regarding the national sovereignty of all nations with Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, he said that the UN Charter also provides for people’s self-determination. The General Assembly, he added, has declared that UN member states’ governments must respect the self-determination of all people. The “clique” running the Ukrainian regime, Mr. Lavrov charged, has not respected the rights of Ukrainian Russian speaking people. Hence, the need for the referendums to find out the people’s wishes, according to his twisted logic.
"Following those referendums, Russia of course will respect the expression of the will of those people who for many long years have been suffering from the abuses of the neo-Nazi regime," Mr. Lavrov said
The problem with the Russian foreign minister’s argument is that the people who are voting on the referendums are doing so under highly coercive conditions. Their votes are being dictated by the will of the autocratic Russian regime, which is Russian annexation of Ukrainian lands taken by force. This raw power grab in violation of international law is anything but an exercise of self-determination. The whole referendum process is a sham.
Russia’s foreign minister blamed the West for raising the nuclear issue, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hint that nuclear weapons could be used if necessary to defend all of Russia. When asked whether that would include the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine that Russia annexes, he said that the “entire territory of the Russian Federation is under the full protection of the state,” which would include any territories that Russia annexes. He referred reporters to Russia’s written policy governing the use of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine is being flooded with weapons supplied by the United States and its West European partners
Ukraine is being flooded with weapons supplied by the United States and its West European partners, which make them active participants in the war in Ukraine, according to Mr. Lavrov. He also used the 'whataboutism' tactic in accusing the United States of engaging in a double standard when criticizing what Russia has done in Ukraine, citing examples of U.S. military actions in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Picking up again on his claim that the West was intent on destroying Russia, Mr. Lavrov accused Western countries of harboring “racist” attitudes “toward anything Russian.”
At one point during the press conference, Foreign Minister Lavrov rebuked a reporter from Reuters for asking about any “pressure” that was being exerted by China regarding the Ukraine conflict. He strongly objected to the use of the word “pressure.” Lavrov told the reporter, "You may tell your readers, listeners, viewers that I avoided to answer your question."
So ended another day “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (to use William Shakespeare’s words from Macbeth in a present-day context) at the United Nations General Assembly’s week of high-level debate.
