UN efforts have failed Ukraine
From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.
WATCHING all the terrible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine it is difficult not to feel with President Zelensky that the United Nations is a body without any teeth and I can only sympathise with the Ukrainian people whilst allowing the whole country to be laid to waste along with its valiant people.
If it can’t help, surely UN should dissolve itself and a new body be formed without countries such as Russia and China sitting on a security council and being able to veto any proposal to deal with marauding countries destroying whole sovereign nations?
From: Jim Buckley, Ackton, Pontefract.
A RESOLUTION before the United Nations demanded Russia stop hostilities, and stop destruction of cities.
This would allow humanitarian aid to be given. 140 countries voted in favour.
Five voted against – Russia, Belarus, Syria, Eritrea, and North Korea. Thirty-eight countries abstained, most of them saying that they would have voted for the alternative resolution. This only dealt with the humanitarian aspect, and did not mention Russia at all.
I asked myself why the 38 would not vote to stop the death and destruction. That is what people want to see, so were these 38 not speaking for their own citizens?
With this in mind, I looked at the election result in Hungary differently than I may otherwise have done. In that election Orban said that he was the Putin of Hungary, and won.
It is interesting to read what the representative of Hungary said at the United Nations. She called for the immediate cessation of hostilities, and voted for the resolution. This was not taking sides, but upholding the principles of the UN. This was the attitude of a country whose leader likens himself to Putin! If only the 38 abstainers had thought it through, and done similarly, the vote would have been more telling.
From: John Heawood, Eastward Avenue, York.
ROGER Backhouse’s reply to my letter about Nato provocation of
Russia (The Yorkshire Post, April 6) confirms today’s grimmest paradox: The threat of Nato defending Ukraine has probably contributed to a war in which Nato will not defend Ukraine.