High-level Meeting to Commemorate the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations
21 September 2020
Ukraine
His Excellency Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Statement Summary
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, President of Ukraine, said no one could have imagined that 2020 would have arranged such a powerful crash test for the world. At the fateful conference in San Francisco, unstable post-war times united the founding States, prompting them to set aside the contradictions in order to build a better world, marked by peace, respect, the rule of international law, human rights and the truth. Regrettably, the twenty?first century is filled with conflict, aggression, dictatorship and human rights violations. The United Nations became a symbol that humanity should have learned the tragic lesson of the Second World War. But occupation of Crimea and military Russian aggression in Donbas have proved that this lesson has not been learned. “It is not just war in Ukraine. It is war in Europe,” he emphasized. And it is not simply an encroachment on the sovereignty of an independent State — it is an attempt to return to divided spheres of world influence. “Peace and prosperity remain the values people are shedding blood for,” he said, asking: “Do we need more bloody lessons to rethink our being on this planet?” He urged the world to understand COVID?19 as a warning sign to stop the controversies and, instead, join efforts to achieve ground-breaking results. He called not only for a return to the purposes and principles of the Charter, but for the start of their permanent and full implementation, stressing: “Let’s start now.”
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