Maxim Ryzhenkov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belarus, recalled that his country, where one in three people were killed, tortured or burned during the Second World War, was among the founders of the UN.  “Never have Belarusians lived so well, with such dignity and under such a peaceful sky as they have in the last 30 years, when, under the leadership of our President, we have been successfully building a socially oriented State in the interests of ordinary people.”

“It is undisputable that the UN remains the central element of international life,” he emphasized. The UN is indeed preserving the planet from another world war but the Security Council’s influence on global affairs is not what it used to be.  A huge network of international structures has been created under the UN and numerous legal documents have been developed, but only a few of these structures remain truly functional.  The UN is being used for certain purposes, and the actions of the United States to reduce its support to the UN are a very unpleasant wake-up call.  If the UN is able to be an impartial forum and move with the times, it will be in demand by everyone, he said.  Otherwise, it will suffer the same fate as the League of Nations.

Pointing to European neighbours, he said they are laying mines, building walls and defensive lines and using barbed wire, trying to create among their populations a sense of impending threat from "barbarians to the East.”  And there have already been hundreds of victims along this wall since its construction began – hundreds of innocent migrants from the South, seeking a better life and “striving to reach the European Union which has destroyed the normal way of life in their countries.”  Beyond that wall stands not only Belarus and the Russian Federation but, “as our Chinese friends say, a community of shared destiny and responsibility for the future of humanity.”