Ukraine: High-level Briefing
This afternoon (23 September) at 4:00 pm EST, the Security Council will hold a high-level briefing on Ukraine, which was requested by the Council’s five European members (France, Denmark, Greece, Slovenia, and the UK). Republic of Korea (ROK) Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is expected to chair the meeting. Several Council members and other participants will be represented by their heads of state or foreign ministers, who are in New York for the high-level segment of the 80th session of the General Assembly, which runs from 23-29 September. Secretary-General António Guterres is expected to brief. Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Spain, and Ukraine will participate under rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, while the European Union (EU) will take part under rule 39. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to represent his country at the meeting.
The EU and Ukraine will deliver a statement at the press stakeout prior to the meeting and have invited a wide range of member states to support it. The statement is expected to emphasise that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of the UN Charter, express solidarity with Ukraine, and call on Russia to engage in meaningful negotiations to end the war.
Guterres, several Council members, and other member states are likely to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law. They are also likely to express concern about the devastating impact of Russia’s aerial campaign on the civilian population, including several deadly assaults in the past month. Extensive Russian drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on 28 August killed at least 21 people and damaged premises belonging to the EU and the British Council in Kyiv, prompting an urgent Council meeting on 29 August. On 7 September, according to Ukrainian authorities, Russia launched 805 drones (the most in a single attack since the start of the war) and 13 cruise missiles on several Ukrainian cities—including Dnipro, Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih and Odesa—that killed at least five children. A Russian strike on 9 September using a glide bomb hit the village of Yarova in the eastern Donetsk region as a crowd of elderly people gathered to collect their monthly pensions, claiming the lives of 24 people and injuring 19 others. Russian drone and missile attacks overnight on 19-20 September targeted multiple cities across the country, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, while an aerial attack on Zaporizhzhia on 22 September claimed the lives of two people and wounded two more.
The urgent need for negotiations to achieve a ceasefire is likely to be a key focus of today’s meeting, although varying perspectives are expected to be reflected in the statements. European countries are likely to be sharply critical of Russia for escalating the conflict and for failing to engage in negotiations in good faith. They may commend recent diplomatic efforts by the US, accuse Russia of demonstrating an unwillingness to engage in serious negotiations, and implore it to commit to a peaceful end to the war. Several members may also emphasise that a peace agreement needs to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and include security guarantees for the country.
Other countries—such as China and Pakistan—are likely to be less critical of Russia, and may emphasise the importance of dialogue, diplomacy and restraint. Russia may argue that its aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities are focused on military targets, and accuse Kyiv of placing air defence systems in residential areas where civilians are at greater risk, as it did during the 29 August Council meeting. It may accuse Western countries of hypocrisy, while noting that Russia is also being targeted by Ukrainian aerial assaults. In this regard, Russia may reference the 21 September killing of two people in Ukrainian strikes on the Belgorod region in Russia, one from shelling and another from a drone attack, as well as strikes on 20 September on oil refineries in the Saratov and Samara regions. Russia may also state that it is ready to engage in negotiations to end the war, but insist on certain conditions, including that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops cannot be stationed in Ukraine as part of any security guarantees to the country.
There has been little movement on the diplomatic front. The 15 August summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, ended without an agreement or specific areas of progress. A subsequent meeting that Trump held at the White House on 18 August with Zelenskyy and several European leaders was apparently constructive but inconclusive. Moscow has reportedly outlined conditions for a Putin-Zelenskyy summit, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that such a meeting can take place “[w]ith the understanding that all issues that require consideration at the highest level will be well worked out and experts and ministers will prepare appropriate recommendations”. Trump subsequently conceded that Putin and Zelenskyy are “not ready yet” to meet, expressing frustration with the difficulty in mediating a peace deal.
While Russia has rejected the idea of deploying European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine as part of a post-war settlement, several states have emphasised the importance of providing security guarantees to Ukraine, including by deploying troops. On 4 September, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer co-chaired a high-level meeting in Paris of the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of primarily European countries supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Zelenskyy, and several other leaders attending the meeting, either in person or virtually, discussed potential post-war security guarantees for Ukraine. In this regard, 26 countries reportedly vowed to participate in support of such guarantees. Although the exact details of these commitments remain unclear, some countries—including France and the UK, among others—have indicated that they are willing to deploy troops. Following the meeting, the participants held a conference call with Trump, who reportedly said that any security guarantees need to be led by Europe, although the US could “backstop” these efforts.
Today, some participants, especially European countries, may express alarm at recent incursions of Russian aircraft and drones into the airspace of NATO members. The Council held urgent meetings on 12 and 22 September to discuss reports that Russian drones violated Polish airspace on 9-10 September and that three MIG-31 Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace on 19 September, respectively. (For more information, see our 12 and 21 September What’s in Blue stories.) Some countries, particularly NATO members, might reiterate their condemnation of such incursions as violations of international law and express concern about the risk of escalation. The US, the one non-European Council member in the Alliance, stated in both the meeting on 12 September and the one on 22 September that it would “defend every inch of NATO territory”. Russia, for its part, has rejected accusations of violating the airspace of NATO members as groundless.
