International System has Failed and Must be Replaced with One ‘without the Terrorist Russian Federation,’ Editors of ‘Grani’ Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 8 – Putin’s war in Ukraine and the way in which Russia has conducted itself more generally under his rule have undermined the current international system and begun its “great transformation,” one in which “Ukraine has a special role to play as today’s moral leader of the free world and future victorious power,” the editors of Grani say.

            The most “authoritative” international organizations have suffered a period of shame and powerlessness and a new international order must be constructed, they say. “The main thing is that it will be a world without the terrorist Russian Federation” which seeks to destroy any limits on its activities (graniru.org/opinion/editorial/m.285731.html).

            The secretary general of the United Nations has praised Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu for his experience in peacekeeping only a day before he oversees the shelling of Odessa. The IAEA sits on its hands for six months before addressing the problems of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine now in Russian hands, Grani says.

            Moreover, the Red Cross kept its people from approaching Russian lines and thus kept them from playing the role they are supposed to play. UNICEF did the same and thus could not block the kidnaping of Ukrainian children by Russians. And Amnesty International instead of unmasking Russian deceit helped spread it around the world.

               “The inefficiency, moral failure, and corruption of individual structures and entire clusters of the international bureaucracy have been obvioius,” they say. “The paralysis of the UN Security Council, the impunity for war crimes, the inability to put a stop to dirty money and the hybrid influence of dictatorial regimes - all these dysfunctions are not just visible but deadly.”

               Grani continues: “The Russian Federation, mistakenly considered a state, is a mafia terrorist structure, a giant organized crime group. It undermines all the rules and mechanisms of coexistence and interaction of world players. It ignores the decisions of international courts. And it tramples on the UN Charter, and the Helsinki Act, and other accords.”

               “As sanctions tighten and isolation intensifies, terrorist Russia increasingly boldly uses blackmail, sabotage, provocations, trying to discredit the very idea of ​​​​international agreements and law.” Indeed, “any structure with the participation of the Russian Federation is compromised.”

               “Defensive Western structures received a new impetus. NATO is strengthening and expanding. Rammstein's complex machine has been put into operation - the only international mechanism for today that really saves the lives of Ukrainians.

               “Approaches to nuclear deterrence are also changing: Germany has started talking about a European nuclear umbrella.” And the great war in the center of Europe has restarted the system of international justice,” the editors say.

               “For a ‘rules-based world order’ to survive, it will have to be ‘reassembled,’ with rotten structures discarded, working ones strengthened, and many new arrangements and agreements worked out.” But one thing is already clear: it will have to be a world “without the terrorist Russian Federation.”