A meeting today of the UN Security Council on the topic “Post COVID-19 Global Governance,” resulted in a sharp war of words between Russia and China, on the one side, both represented by their respective foreign ministers, and Kelly Craft, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
In his comments, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang YI, who was the first to speak, stressed the importance of UN-centered multilateralism and alluded to countries — including the U.S. — opting out of making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public good available to people everywhere. “In such a challenging moment, major countries are even more duty-bound to put the future of humankind first, discard Cold War mentality and ideological bias and come together in the spirit of partnership to tide over the difficulties,” Wang said. He also criticized the sanctions being levied by the U.S. and the EU on Russia and Syria, saying that such “long-arm jurisdiction” had to be opposed in order to preserve the sanctity of international law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also lashed out at the COVID “blame-game” being conducted by the U.S. against China. “In a whole number of countries there is a temptation to look abroad for those who are responsible for their own internal problems,” Lavrov declared. “And we see attempts on the part of individual countries to use the current situation in order to move forward their narrow interests of the moment in order to settle the score with the undesirable governments or geopolitical competitors.”
