“This war is to extinguish Ukraine’s right to exist as a people”

The nearly 150 world leaders who are meeting in New York for the 77th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly are participating in the second day of the first face-to-face summit since the Covid-19 pandemic appeared.

The issues that the leaders address on the day include the Russian war in Ukraine and climate change.

Follow here the most outstanding speeches of this September 21:

• Migration, drug trafficking and climate change among the central themes of Lasso

The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, highlighted the need for a frontal fight against drug trafficking.

The president assured that his country is the third country with the most cocaine seized in the world, but that the repercussions of this scourge must not only be addressed from an economic perspective, but it is also crucial to take into account the devastation that organized crime causes. From illegal mining to human trafficking.

Lasso also referred to the migration crisis of thousands of Venezuelan citizens, most of them received by neighboring nations. And although Colombia ranks first in the world in the number of displaced Venezuelans it hosts, Ecuador also receives part of the affected people for which it requested help from the international community.

Climate change was also at the center of his speech, in which he pointed out the measures taken during his government to combat the environmental crisis.

Lasso assured that the Ecuadorian territory “is only responsible for 0.8% of greenhouse gases”, but launches a transversal policy towards the clean energy transition.

“It is not a question of how much one has industrialized in the past, but how much one can contribute to the future,” he stressed.

For this reason, the head of state said that his government made the decision to make Ecuador “the first country in Latin America and the fourth in the world to adopt a cross-cutting policy towards ecological transition.”

• “You cannot take the territory of another nation by force”: Biden lashes out at Russia

The war ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine took center stage in US President Joe Biden’s speech.

The president blamed the leader of the Kremlin for the “horrendous crimes” committed during the almost seven months of war in the neighboring country.

“This war is to extinguish Ukraine’s right to exist as a state and the right to exist as a people (…) If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequence, then we put at risk everything that this very institution stands for,” said the leader of the White House.

In this sense, Biden dismissed the justifications given by Putin on September 21, when he announced the “partial mobilization” of troops to the neighboring nation, as well as support for referendums to annex the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Moscow to Moscow. Zaporizhia. Putin said that his decision responds to alleged threats from the West.

“No one threatened Russia and no one other than Russia sought conflict. We had warned that it was coming and we did a lot to prevent it, but Putin’s words make his purpose undeniable (…) He said that Ukraine was created by Russia and that it never had a real state, now we see that it attacks schools, railway stations, centers of culture and history of Ukraine, there is even evidence of atrocities, war crimes such as the mass graves in Izium”, described the leader of the White House.

Biden also assured that Moscow makes “irresponsible threats about the use of nuclear weapons.” He also referred to the food crisis triggered by the conflict, something for which he also blamed Moscow, after pointing out that Western sanctions “explicitly allow the export of food.”

On the other hand, the Democratic leader referred to the historic pact reached in 2015 with Tehran. He insisted that his government “will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

• Raisi: West applies “double standards” on nuclear capabilities

In his speech before the plenary session of the UN General Assembly, the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, insisted that his country’s nuclear program has scientific and civil purposes and attacked what he considers inconsistency between the pressures on his country and the nuclear development of other nations.

“Double standards are applied when talking about the scientific nuclear capabilities of the Islamic Republic. Some countries are willing to use it as a threat so as not to have to face what they themselves have to face, which is denuclearization (…) They want to unfairly point us out as a nuclear threat and yet they continue to use those weapons,” the president said after referring to the capabilities bombs from Israel, an ally of the United States and which strongly opposes the pact with Tehran.

Raisi asserted that his country “does not want to build or obtain nuclear weapons.” Adopting a defiant tone, the leader demanded in his speech guarantees that after the current negotiations, the United States will not abandon an eventual resumption of the agreement.

Likewise, he questioned that 85% of the inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are concentrated in his country, which, according to what he assured, only has 2% of the world’s nuclear activities.

The Iranian head of state also referred to the military operation ordered by the US government in Iraq in January 2020, in which Iran’s most powerful military officer, General Qassem Soleimani, died.

“Through a fair court, we will bring to justice those who made our beloved General Soleimani a martyr,” he said after noting that the then president of the United States publicly acknowledged having given the order.

But in the Islamic Republic, Soleimani was considered a key and charismatic bishop in the country’s history. The military man played an important role in the fight against jihadist forces and became a major Iranian influence in the Middle East, where he reinforced Tehran’s diplomatic weight, especially in Iraq and Syria.

with Reuters