In the middle of an emergency session of the UN Security Council, on the evening of February 23, his face went white, his back arched. Russia, the country he represents as ambassador in New York, has just invaded Ukraine, causing an endless global earthquake.
At almost 60 years old, Vassily Alekseevich Nebenzia, balding, massive build, wearing fine glasses and often manipulating his watch, then headed the Council.
Unheard of at the UN: a president of the body defending international peace whose country, a nuclear power and UN pillar as a permanent member with the right of veto, is waging war on a democracy…
Was he aware when he opened this almost grotesque session with multiple speeches calling on Moscow to hold back its armed wing when it is already spreading over Ukraine? Does he believe in the speeches he reads?
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” a senior UN official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Several ambassadors share this impression. “Are you connected with Moscow?” Ukrainian Sergiy Kyslytsya often asks him.
“Vassily Alekseevich, the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: + Man does not only have a life, he also has a conscience +”, reminded him, fixing him the Briton Barbara Woodward. “I know that you spoke today on instructions, but I ask you to report faithfully to Moscow what you have heard today from this Council – the urgency of the calls for peace”, added this specialist in the Russia and China.
Asked by AFP for an interview, the person concerned did not respond. Since the end of February, he has bowed his back at each emergency session of the Security Council, which should organize new ones this week. Under the exasperated eye of his counterparts, he read speeches denying the destruction of civilian sites reported by the media.
In improvised answers, he happens to use the word “war”, banned in Moscow. He then takes care to specify as soon as he quotes his boss, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov.
“The Russian system has never been so centralized,” said a Western ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity. Russian diplomats “are excellent professionals but they are not in a position to interact with power, they are just executors of ukases, associated with their preparation or not – often not”, he adds.
– Solitary hobby –
At the UN, the mastery of the files by Vassily Nebenzia is welcomed. His career took him to Bangkok and Geneva with a specialty, international organizations. He is broken in the mysteries of multilateralism and plays with procedures for the benefit of his country.
Beyond the oratorical contests in the “theater” of the Security Council, relations are, on the garden side, cordial and polite with his counterparts. Since the invasion, they have remained so, according to several sources.
This ambassador has letters and wit. “I am able to do two things at the same time,” he replied to AFP, smirking, after being surprised while he was giving a speech in Russian, listening at the same time on an earpiece to his translation into Russian. English.
The Russians are trained in this double work, specifies his entourage. This allows them to check in the language intended for the greatest number the accuracy of the interpretation, even if it means correcting it live, according to diplomats.
In diplomatic receptions, Vassily Nebenzia is friendly. Her favorite cocktail? “Half vodka, half champagne!” he said one day to two French journalists.
Married and the father of a son, the ambassador likes to get away from it all on weekends on the handlebars of his European sport bike. A solitary hobby that seems to go hand in hand with his new status of “one against all”.
Without depriving himself of staging. On February 28, during a press conference closing his month as president, he abruptly interrupts himself to pick up his mobile phone. After having listened to his interlocutor without speaking, he hangs up and announces, posing as a victim, that the United States is expelling 12 members of its diplomatic mission.
Twelve spies and unrelated to the war, specifies in the wake of Washington. Twelve soldiers, however, recently revealed to AFP diplomats.
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