United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened this week’s gathering of world leaders with a stark acknowledgment that the war in Ukraine will not end through diplomacy anytime soon.
Guterres said on Tuesday ahead of the U.N. General Assembly that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for the war in Ukraine, earlier in the day and that a peace deal is not on the table at this time.
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It’d be “naive to think that we are close to the possibility of a peace deal,” he said. “I have no illusions that at the present moment, the chances of a peace deal are minimal.”
The meeting at the U.N. will come in the aftermath of Ukraine’s most successful counteroffensive to date. Ukraine has gained back several thousand square miles of territory in the northeast, but Russia’s occupation in the south remains fierce.
Guterres said geopolitical rifts are currently at “the widest they have been since at least the Cold War,” and he warned that such divides “are paralyzing the global response to the dramatic challenges we face,” citing war, climate, poverty, hunger, and others.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to address the assembly and he “will also take part in a range of bilateral meetings and multilateral events,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week, according to Tass.
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Putin said that the Russian delegation will “push ahead with the unifying international agenda.”
“As far as Russia is concerned, we will not abandon our sovereign policy. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we are determined to push ahead with the unifying international agenda and to contribute to the search for effective answers to numerous contemporary challenges and threats and promote a settlement of acute regional conflicts,” Putin said. “This is precisely Russia’s stance at the current 77th session of the UN General Assembly.”
