President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a powerful speech at the United Nations General Assembly, taunting the organization for its blind-eye approach to key international issues.
Zelensky questioned the organization after it had ignored the Crimea Platform summit and questioned the organization’s strength in terms of distributing lifesaving vaccines.
“We are all people, we are all in the same boat, but lifeboats will first be given to the 1st class passengers,” Zelensky said in his speech. Adding that “today the UN is like a retired superhero who has forgotten what he could do.”
He’s not wrong.
Solving international crises was never the UN’s strong suit. It’s not surprising that the UN has largely abstained from getting involved in Russia’s seven-year-long war against Ukraine.
The UN doesn’t represent the 193 member states, rather the five key members, one of whom, Russia, wages a war against Ukraine killing more than 13,000 people in the process.
An organization where two dictatorships — Russia and China — hold veto powers over nearly every crucial international issue is doomed to fail.
Yet, this isn’t breaking news. The UN has long switched to solving humanitarian issues, leaving politics, economy and war to member states.
Ukraine won’t be able to reform a 76-year-old institution, nor will it be able to change how the world works.
While Zelensky seemingly always has all the right words, he must understand the UN, NATO and the European Union won’t solve Ukrainian problems. But Zelensky can solve many of them.
Reforming the country’s judiciary, improving the standard of living, increasing Ukrainian military capability and building an economically successful state is the only way to move forward.
The UN’s inability to distribute COVID vaccines equally between member states isn’t the reason why Ukraine has a dire medical sector where hospitals lack equipment and healthcare workers lack decent salaries.
Ukraine fumbled the initial COVID response and still appears to have problems in promoting vaccination among the country’s population despite having enough vaccines. Ukraine has severe shortages of other crucial drugs due to problems with medical procurement.
Taunting the UN for lacking interest in the Crimean Platform, the goal of which is to return Kremlin-occupied Crimea back to Ukraine, ignores the fact that the first such event was held seven years after Russia invaded the peninsula militarily and seized the territory.
Ukraine has a spree of problems in seemingly all sectors and government officials must understand it’s up to the Ukrainian people and their representatives to solve the stockpile of issues before they are kicked out of office.
