UN General Assembly
2022

In the past few days, many of my colleagues in this Hall have spoken of Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. For European Member States in particular it carries dark echoes of our continent’s past. We face an expansionist Power brutally invading and occupying a peaceful neighbour. While we in Europe faced that many times in the twentieth century, we did not think we would face it again in the twenty-first. But this is not just a European issue or a concern for the West. All States, and particularly small countries such as my own, should fear a world where might equals right, where the strong can bully the weak, where sovereignty and territorial integrity can be blatantly violated and where the Charter that all of us in the Assembly have faithfully put our trust in can be flouted with impunity.