Belarus's Representative Tells It Like It Is at UNGA

At the UN General Assembly, Sergei Aleinik, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belarus, employed his government’s characteristic bluntness in characterizing the strategic situation, stating that the Ukrainian people “have become a pawn in the great game of the West to preserve its own global hegemony.” He called upon certain “member states” (it was clear who he meant) to “stop the policy of ostracism” in the UN with insults and disrespectful rhetoric, such as “using the word regime to describe legitimate Governments of Member States,” and added that “the UN was created for cooperation in the interests of people, and not for settling the accounts of some states with others.” He warned that “politicizing the UN only discredits it in the eyes of ordinary people.” He went on to deftly quote American diplomat George Kennan, author of the “Containment Strategy,” saying: “Some degree of conflict and antagonism is present in every international relationship, therefore some measure of compromise is necessary everywhere, if political societies are to live together on the same planet.