Special to WorldTribune.com
By John J. Metzler, July 17, 2024
As Ukraine’s war enters its third summer of fighting, there’s a morbid cadence to the conflict.
The Russian invaders continue a bloody slugfest with a tough but worn-down Ukrainian army. Civilians throughout Ukraine are intended victims of indiscriminate Russian missile attacks. Clearly the international community has long ago chosen political sides but then sits on the sidelines as to viable solutions.
In Kyiv the capital, the most recent high-profile atrocity, a Russian missile attack on the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital, jolted us from the ho-hum headlines and military claims about who is winning skirmishes along the vast murky depth of the Ukraine/Russian front line.
Following the unprovoked attack on the Children’s Hospital which was for specialized cancer patients, the fifteen member UN Security Council met in emergency session. Ironically the Council presidency for the month of July is held by Russia, the perpetrator.
Joyce Msuya, the UN’s top humanitarian official told ambassadors that two of the country’s main specialist hospitals for children and women were heavily damaged along with key energy infrastructure, reportedly killing dozens of civilians, including children. She stressed, “Intentionally directing attacks against a protected hospital is a war crime, and perpetrators must be held to account.”
Ms. Msuya warned that these recent incidents were part of a “deeply concerning pattern of systematic attacks” harming healthcare and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.
There was a sullen stillness to the Security Council meeting on the Kyiv attacks; The Russian ambassador, seemingly self-conscious, dispensed with the usual diplomatic niceties as he introduced the speakers, especially the United States, the UK and of course Ukraine.
U.S. Amb. Linda Thomas Greenfield stated sternly that they gathered in emergency session for a single reason: “We are here today because Russia, Permanent Member of the Security Council… attacked a children’s hospital.” The Ambassador added, “The fact is that across the country hundreds of children have been killed, thousands have been wounded and millions have been displaced from their homes as Russia continues its campaign of terror in Ukraine.”
UN humanitarian sources highlighted that aid operations have been impacted by the attacks, with more than 14.6 million people, around 40 percent of Ukraine’s population, requiring some form of humanitarian assistance.
Russia’s delegate Vassily Nebenzia fired back rhetorically that the “alleged attack” as he called it, was as the Kremlin claims, “a missile of the Ukrainian air defense.” He added in stunning Orwellian tradition, “Here you get the magic of verbal gymnastics demonstrated by Western members of the Security Council, trying by any means to protect the Kyiv regime.”
Ukraine’s Amb. Sergiy Kyslytsya said that Russia had “deliberately targeted” society’s most vulnerable and defenseless group, “children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.” The Ukrainian delegate reported a Russian KH-101 Missile hit the hospital.
Kyslytsya stressed that the Russian “war criminals will wind up in Hell, bypassing Purgatory.”
As expected, no resolution nor formal statement was voted on, just this verbal rebuke.
Two hundred miles to the south in Washington D.C., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Atlantic Alliance in 1949. The Post-WWII Pact of free states was designed to defend war torn Europe from then looming Soviet aggression and serve as a clear deterrent to invasion. NATO has worked remarkably well, and today Europe is whole and free.
But following the fall of the Soviet Union and the freedom tsunami which swept into Central Europe, countries ranging from Poland and the Baltics and later Hungary and the Czech Republic and others were brought into NATO. And the organization’s once Europe-focused mission ranged to the Balkans, Libya and to Afghanistan.
At the same time, the majority of NATO members failed to keep up the necessary military spending to sustain and support the Alliance. Significantly, former President Donald Trump brought political pressures on some NATO member states to pay; Today two-thirds of Allies have fulfilled their commitment of at least 2% of GDP annual defense spending.
Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine which started in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, and later in 2022 with the current invasion, there’s a strong political pull to bring Ukraine into NATO, despite the military risks. Such a move could bring the Alliance into a military nuclear conflict with Moscow as NATO’s Article 5 clearly stipulates collective defense.
Yet the NATO Conference communiqué while supporting Ukraine doesn’t call for full membership anytime soon; “We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements and decide its own future, free from outside interference. Ukraine’s future is in NATO.”
But when? In the meantime, NATO has slated another $40 billion in military aid for Kyiv. Tragically the war continues.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]
Ukraine’s trauma continues; UN and NATO have no solution added by Editor One on July 17, 2024
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