Newsman: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Ankara before heading to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and then to Ukraine for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a U.N. statement said on Saturday.
“The Secretary-General said that at this time of great peril and consequence, he would like to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York ahead of the trip.
On his way to Moscow, Guterres will first visit Turkey and meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He travels to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
The U.N. chief will be in Kyiv three days after the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who came promising hundreds of millions of dollars in additional military aid.
Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, blasted Guterres’ decision to visit Moscow first as Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities continues taking a devastating toll on civilians.
“It is simply wrong to go first to Russia and then to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Saturday. “There is no justice and no logic in this order.”
“The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation,” he said.
The deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, Igor Zhovkva, said Sunday on “Meet the Press” that the Secretary-General was “not really” authorized to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian government.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was headed on Monday to meet Putin in person. The U.N. chief is to arrive Tuesday in Moscow after first visiting Ankara, Turkey, where the government has been leading the push for a ceasefire.
