Lavrov's flight to New York must avoid the airspace of several countries

Lavrov’s flight to New York must avoid the airspace of several countries | War in Ukraine

Posted On: September 21, 2022

The plane carrying the head of Russian diplomacy to New York, where he will attend the UN General Assembly, will have to avoid the airspace of countries that have closed it to Russian planes because of the war in Ukraine.

“The route has no stopovers and will bypass airspace closed by hostile countries”, the flight should last 12:30 p.m., Sergei Ryabkov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Sergei’s “number two” said on Tuesday. Lavrov, quoted by Russian news agency TASS.

Russian planes are prohibited from flying over the airspace of the European Union (EU), as well as that of other non-EU countries, such as the United Kingdom, Norway or Switzerland, in addition to the Canada and the United States themselves. The route that Lavrov’s plane will take has not been announced.

For the United States, however, Lavrov and his delegation received the necessary visas to enter the country, but only to participate in the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, where the head of Russian diplomacy will make an intervention and will have about two dozen bilateral meetings, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week.

At the time, the “logistical question” related to Lavrov’s trip to the United States remained to be settled.

This Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that Lavrov will defend, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, Moscow’s position to “end the unipolar world”.

After receiving credentials from foreign ambassadors in Moscow, Putin promised to maintain Russia’s “sovereign foreign policy” and accused the United States of wanting to impose “hegemony” on the General Assembly of the United States. UN. Although he sent Lavrov to New York, Putin does not plan to make a speech at this year’s General Assembly because Russian intervention in Ukraine has been widely condemned around the world.

“The development of multipolarity is meeting resistance from those who strive to maintain a hegemonic role in world affairs and to control everything: Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. […] But it can’t last forever. It’s impossible,” Putin said. He continued: “We in Russia are not going to abandon our sovereign path. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we want to promote a unifying international agenda […] and contribute to the regulation of serious regional crises”.

The week of high-level meetings of the United Nations General Assembly began on Tuesday, at the UN headquarters in New York, and will continue until next Monday, with the presence of dozens of heads of state and of government, including the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa.

This is the first General Assembly since the start of the war in Ukraine and the first face-to-face since the start of the pandemic. The event is being held under the theme “A Turning Point: Transformative Solutions to Interconnected Challenges”, and will focus on the war in Ukraine and the global food, climate and energy crises.