AFP

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday accused Russia of “shamelessly” violating the international order by invading Ukraine, as he pledged billions in food aid and backed an expansion of UN Security Council seats for the developing world.

Biden sought to woo the world in an address to the United Nations hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin called up reservists to fight in Ukraine, a step Western powers portrayed as desperation.

“Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter,” Biden told the General Assembly.

“Let us speak plainly. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor — attempted to erase the sovereign state from the map.”

After a frontal denunciation of Russia, Biden focused much of his address on the interests of the developing world, where resentment has built in some quarters over the West’s massive spending on weapons for Ukraine.

Biden announced another $2.9 billion for a fund aimed at addressing global food insecurity, which has worsened markedly since the invasion of Ukraine, a major grain exporter.

He also threw his support behind an expansion of the Security Council, an idea mulled for decades but which has previously seen low US enthusiasm.

Biden said the United States would back permanent seats for Africa and Latin America in addition to its previous support to include Japan and India.

He also promised the United States would “refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure the council remains credible and effective.”

Russia in recent years has been the most frequent user of its veto power. The United States, China, France and Britain also enjoy vetoes, a legacy of the power dynamics at the end of World War II.

Russia has previously scoffed at US high-mindedness on the Security Council, pointing to how former president George W. Bush circumvented it to invade Iraq.

– Calls to pressure Russia –

The General Assembly is meeting in person after two years of disruptions due to the pandemic. Only one leader was granted an exception to speak via video — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who addresses the world body later Wednesday.

Just as world leaders were meeting, Russian allies announced they would hold referendums in occupied territory on annexation and Putin announced the mobilization of reservists, showing he is in no hurry to end the war.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on the sidelines of the General Assembly, said that the world must put “maximum pressure” on Putin whose decisions “will serve to isolate Russia further.”

Standing at the UN rostrum late Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the world was “facing a new fragmentation” after years of hope following the end of the Cold War and his own nation’s reunification.

“Major global crises are piling up before us and are combining and reinforcing one another. Some have even seen this as a harbinger of a world without rules,” he said.

Scholz said that Putin will “only give up his war and his imperialist ambitions if he realizes he cannot win.”

“We stand firmly at the side of those under attack — for the protection of the lives and the freedom of the Ukrainians, and for the protection of our international order,” he said.

– No ‘Cold War’ with China –

Amid warnings of rising global division, Biden also sought to calm tensions with China, days after he again promised US support if Beijing invades Taiwan.

“Let me be direct about the competition between the United States and China,” Biden said. “As we manage shifting geopolitical trends, the United States will conduct itself as a reasonable leader. We do not seek conflict, we do not seek a Cold War.”

The Biden administration has been encouraged by Putin’s acknowledgement of Chinese concerns when he met President Xi Jinping last week.

On Wednesday, China called for a “ceasefire through dialogue” in Ukraine. It has previously offered moral support to Russia but US officials say Beijing has not accepted requests for material help.

Among other leaders addressing the United Nations was Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who traveled to New York just as protests spread in his country over the death of a woman arrested by morality police.

Biden said that Americans “stand with the brave women of Iran” after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who allegedly was beaten to death after not wearing her headscarf in compliance with the clerical state’s guidelines.

Raisi accused the West of “double standards” as he mentioned the killings of Indigenous women in Canada.

Raisi was trailed by protesters in New York with dissidents filing human rights lawsuits against the hardline cleric over his role as a judge during mass executions in the 1980s.

bur-sct/mlm/ec

Hurricane Fiona churned toward Bermuda as a powerful Category 4 storm on Wednesday as Puerto Rico struggled to restore power and water after receving a crushing blow.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Fiona was expected to approach Bermuda, a British territory of some 64,000 people, late on Thursday.

In Washington, the State Department advised Americans to reconsider travel to Bermuda and authorized family members of US government personnel to leave.

“US citizens in Bermuda wishing to depart the island should depart now, ahead of Hurricane Fiona’s arrival,” it said in a travel advisory.

Fiona was upgraded overnight to a Category 4 hurricane, the second highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The NHC said the storm was packing maximum winds of 130 miles per hour (210 kilometers per hour) as it headed north toward Bermuda at around eight miles per hour.

“On the forecast track, the center of Fiona will continue to move away from the Turks and Caicos today, approach Bermuda late on Thursday and approach Atlantic Canada late Friday,” the NHC said.

“A storm surge will cause elevated water levels along the coast of Bermuda,” it said. “Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves.”

Fiona has left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and killed four people in Puerto Rico, according to a US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official quoted by The Washington Post.

One death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic.

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell is in Puerto Rico and toured flood damaged areas with the governor of the US territory, Pedro Pierluisi.

– ‘Will not stop’ –

FEMA said it was sending hundreds of additional personnel to Puerto Rico to help with relief efforts on the island, which suffered widespread power outages.

Pierluisi said the storm had caused catastrophic damage on the island of three million people, with some areas receiving more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain.

US President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

LUMA, the Puerto Rico power company, said more than 2,000 utility workers were assessing damage and working to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers.

“LUMA and all our partners will not stop until every customer is restored and the entire grid is reenergized,” its public safety manager Abner Gomez said in a statement.

The storm also left around hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico without drinking water as a result of power outages and flooded rivers, officials said.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones: La Altagracia — home to the popular resort of Punta Cana — El Seibo and Hato Mayor.

After years of financial woes and recession, Puerto Rico in 2017 declared the largest bankruptcy ever by a local US administration. 

Later that year, the double hit from hurricanes Irma and Maria added to the misery, devastating the electrical grid on the island — which has suffered from major infrastructure problems for years.

The grid was privatized in June 2021 in an effort to resolve the problem of blackouts, but the issue has persisted, and the entire island lost power earlier this year.

US President Joe Biden tore into Vladimir Putin Wednesday as he addressed the United Nations just hours after the Russian leader dramatically escalated his seven-month war in Ukraine by calling up his country’s military reservists.

Biden accused Putin of “shamelessly” violating the UN Charter and castigated him over a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons — after Putin said his promise to use all military means in Ukraine was “no bluff.”

“Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter,” Biden said as he addressed the UN General Assembly, warning that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian schools, railway stations and hospitals during a war that Biden said was aimed at “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.”

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, had said ahead of Biden’s address that Washington was taking Putin’s “irresponsible” apparent threat to use nuclear weapons “seriously” and warned it could alter its “strategic posture” if need be.

Putin’s mobilization call came as Moscow-held regions of Ukraine prepare to hold annexation referendums this week, ramping up the stakes in the conflict by allowing Moscow to accuse Ukraine of attacking Russian territory.

Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south — said on Tuesday that they would hold the votes over five days beginning Friday.

In a pre-recorded address to the nation early on Wednesday, Putin accused the West of trying to “destroy” his country through its backing of Kyiv. Russia needed to support those in Ukraine who wanted to “determine their own future”, he said.

The Russian leader announced a partial military mobilization, with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu telling state television that some 300,000 reservists would be called up.

– ‘Not a bluff’ –

“When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff,” Putin said.

“Those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind can also turn in their direction,” Putin added.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Germany’s Bild media group released Wednesday that he did not think Putin would resort to nuclear weapons.

“Tomorrow, Putin can say — as well as Ukraine, we want part of Poland, otherwise we will use atomic weapons. We cannot make these compromises,” he said. 

Separately, Zelensky’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba called Western allies to increase military aid to Kyiv and further isolate Moscow.

On the sidelines of the UN gathering, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the world to “put maximum pressure” on Putin, whose decisions “will serve to isolate Russia further.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the call-up as “an act of desperation” in a “criminal war” he said Russia could not win.

In the wake of the reservist announcement flights out of Russia to neighboring ex-Soviet countries were booked up for days to come, airline data showed, in what appeared to be a rush to quit the country. Prices for remaining seats skyrocketed.

The sudden flurry of moves by Moscow this week came with Russian forces in Ukraine facing their biggest challenge since the start of the conflict.

In a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive in recent weeks, Kyiv’s forces have retaken hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.

In a rare admission of military losses from Moscow, Shoigu said on Wednesday 5,937 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since the launch of the military intervention in February.

– World peace ‘in jeopardy’ –

As Putin made his announcement, residents were clearing rubble and broken glass from a nine-story apartment block hit by an overnight missile strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

“They want to liberate us from what? From our homes? From our relatives? From friends? What else?” she told AFP. “They want to free us from being alive?” said a 50-year-old resident, who gave her name as Galina.

The referendums follow a pattern established in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine after a similar vote.

Like in 2014, Washington, Berlin and Paris denounced the latest ballots, saying the international community would never recognize the results.

Beijing, which so far has tacitly backed Moscow’s intervention called on Wednesday for a “ceasefire through dialogue” after Putin’s address and in likely reference to the referendums said the “territorial integrity of all countries should be respected”.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meanwhile denounced Putin’s “dangerous and reckless nuclear rhetoric.”

And EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday accused Putin of putting world peace “in jeopardy”.

“Putin’s announcement of sham referenda, partial military mobilization and nuclear blackmail are a grave escalation,” Borrell wrote on Twitter.

“Threatening with nuclear weapons is unacceptable and a real danger to all,” he said. 

Kyiv said the referendums were meaningless and vowed to “eliminate” threats posed by Russia, saying its forces would keep retaking territory regardless of what Moscow or its proxies announced.