In the green sweater and brown trousers, as one of the few civilians among heavily armed Ukrainian soldiers and scowling security forces, he looks a little like the conscience of the international community that has become human. On Thursday António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, visited Borodyanka, Irpin and Bucha, the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv where the Russian army is said to have committed war crimes against the civilian population. Indiscriminate executions, rapes, torture. In many places, little more than burnt-out ruins remain of the cities.
Guterres allows himself to be guided through these places of horror with a calm expression. He is standing at the site of a mass grave, the secretary-general staring at the light brown mud desert into which the rain has turned the final resting place of some residents of Borodyanka. Photographs, talks, gesticulates a crowd of journalists, advisers and soldiers around him, only Guterres seems to take the time to let it sink in what that means: a mass grave, in the middle of a city in Europe in the year 2022.
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He later says, “I picture my family in one of those houses that are now destroyed and black. And I see my granddaughters running away in a panic.” He calls for a thorough investigation into the crimes and accountability. At Twitter the 72-year-old Portuguese posts a picture of the visit with the brief comment “War is evil”. A meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was scheduled later Thursday.
Guterres’ visit to Ukraine had been criticized in advance because he met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in Moscow two days earlier. Only then did he travel on to Ukraine via Poland. According to the critics, this seems as if he is conveying the Kremlin’s perspectives and wishes to Kyiv. Irrespective of the diplomatic timetable, however, Putin’s willingness to meet Guterres was taken as a positive signal, because the United Nations is still an important body for Russia, explained the political scientist Manuel Fröhlich on Wednesday in the SZ podcast.
Both sides will have to move. But where is the compromise?
The declared goal of Guterres’ trip, in addition to the question of war crimes, is a possible ceasefire and the establishment of escape corridors for civilians. On Tuesday, Moscow signaled a general willingness to cooperate in this matter. But promises of this kind have come from the Kremlin before, mostly without any concrete action following. The question of an escape corridor is currently particularly acute in the case of the besieged port city of Mariupol, where thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are holed up in a steelworks.
However, it is still unclear whether the United Nations can assume the desired mediating role between Russia and Ukraine. Despite Guterres’ clear condemnation of the Russian war of aggression, given the current state of the war, both sides will have to move for any kind of diplomatic compromise. However, Russia seems to see no reason to accommodate Ukraine in any way. And it is also unclear what demands Zelenskiy would have to meet in order to save the people from the steelworks in Mariupol. Finding a compromise that saves people and makes further negotiations possible is the challenge António Guterres is now facing.