2023-06-07 08:08:51
United States, the United Kingdom and France, lthe three western powers of the UN Security Councilavoided this Tuesday attributing to Ukraine or Russia the responsibility of the blasting of the Kakhovka damalthough they insisted that without the invasion launched by Moscow this disaster would never have happened.
That was the message that the three countries left at a meeting of the highest decision-making body of the United Nations, called urgently after the destruction of this infrastructure located in the southern region of Kherson and of which Ukraine and Russia accuse each other.
In their speeches, representatives from Washington, London and Paris stressed the seriousness of the situation and they insisted on the idea that all of this, including the dam disaster, derives from the war launched by Moscow more than a year ago.
“The destruction of the dam is another casualty of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. I want to make it absolutely clear that it was Russia that started this war, it was Russia that occupied this part of Ukraine, and it was Russian forces that illegally seized the dam last year and have been occupying it ever since,” US envoy Robert Wood said.
The ambassadors of the United Kingdom and France spoke along a similar line, considering the rupture of the dam as another consequence of the Russian invasion and once again asking Moscow for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its forces.
Speaking to reporters upon their arrival at the meeting, both Wood and British representative James Kariuki acknowledged that Their countries for now do not know who blew up the dam and said that their intelligence services are trying to obtain information.
“We will share what we can as soon as we can,” said Kariuki, noting that Russia has carried out “false flag operations” in the past and that he has no doubt that it will do such actions again. Wood, for his part, insisted that Ukraine has no reason to destroy a dam in its own country, but he also did not want to blame Russia directly.
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, insisted before the Security Council that Ukraine was the one who blew up the facility and pointed to the fact that his country already warned the United Nations last year that Kiev had plans to attack Kakhovka.
Nebenzia also showed herself in favor of the UN investigating the incident and he recalled that his country had already sought without results for the international organization to initiate investigations into others such as the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
But neither Nebenzia, nor the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, who also spoke at the session behind all the members of the Council, They were unable to provide any evidence incriminating the rival for the blowing up of the dam.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said this morning that the UN “does not have access to independent information about the circumstances” of the dam’s destruction, refraining from single-handedly targeting any of the countries. “But one thing is clear – he qualified -: this is another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
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