United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres set off a diplomatic rumpus last week when he traveled to Kazan, Russia, for the annual summit of BRICS leaders. Western observers asked why Guterres was attending an event hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in the deportation of children from Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. The optics of the summit were not great for the U.N. chief. He was caught on camera looking deferential while shaking hands with Putin and shared a hug with the authoritarian leader of Belarus, President Aleksander Lukashenko.
The U.N. quickly swung into damage-control mode, announcing that Guterres had told Putin that the war in Ukraine violates the U.N. Charter and international law. But some European politicians, who have long felt that Russia has not faced sufficient penalties at the U.N., were unconvinced. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrelius Landsbergis took to the social media platform X to suggest that Guterres resign.
The trip was probably a diplomatic miscalculation. Guterres had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the U.N. General Assembly in September, by which time his BRICS plans were already known, and he hoped to offset his visit to Russia with a follow-up trip to Kyiv in the near future. He presumably assumed that this would demonstrate balance, although Ukrainian officials now say he is no longer welcome in Kyiv. But if the secretary-general stumbled into a snafu in Kazan, the controversy shows just how hard it is for him to navigate an increasingly divided world.