UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the people of Ukraine ‘need peace’ as the conflict enters its seventh month.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for an end to the war in Ukraine as the country marks the 31st anniversary of independence from the collapsed Soviet Union and six months since Russian forces invaded.
“The consequences of this senseless war are being felt far beyond Ukraine,” Guterres told the UN Security Council in New York on Wednesday. “On the 31st anniversary I wish to congratulate the Ukrainian people,” he said, adding that they “need peace, and they need peace now”. The United Nations chief took the floor ahead of a special meeting to discuss the conflict and briefed the council on his mission to Ukraine’s port of Odesa and Turkey earlier this month. During that trip, he witnessed the progress of a grain export deal between Kyiv and Moscow.
The deal “is progressing well”, Guterres said, but he issued a stark warning about the need to get more fertiliser out of Ukraine and Russia to further calm commodity markets and lower prices for consumers.
“If we don’t stabilise the fertiliser market in 2022, there simply will not be enough food in 2023,” he said., Source: aljazeera.com
Friday, May 1, 2026
