In his face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said his message was unchanged from the start of the conflict: The Russian invasion is a breach of the UN Charter and it must end as quickly as possible.
Guterres, who is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, described his encounter with the Russian leader as “very useful.”
The secretary-general told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he expressed his concerns about the violations of international law, human rights law and the “possibility of war crimes.”
Guterres defended the role of the UN in terms of bringing an end to the two-month-old conflict.
“The war will not end with meetings,” he said. “The war will end when the Russian Federation decides to end it and when there is – after a ceasefire – a possibility of a serious political agreement. We can have all the meetings but that is not what will end the war.”
During the meeting with Putin, Guterres said he discussed the evacuation of civilians from the steel factory encircled in the southern port city of Mariupol.
He said Putin agreed “in principle” on the evacuation of civilians and that discussions were taking place between UN officials and Russia’s ministry of defense to hammer out the details.
“We are also in contact with the government of Ukraine to see if we can have a situation in which nobody can blame the other side for things not happening,” he said.