Most diplomats at the United Nations in New York continue to strive for direct but largely moderate language during the ongoing debates about Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. But not the Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya. He has made some memorable appearances in recent days, emotionally hinting at the fate of his home country. He spoke at the UN General Assembly on Monday, and it was his sharpest, angriest, and certainly most undiplomatic speech yet.
He called the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin had his nuclear arsenal on standby “madness.” He said “madness”; Kyslytsya mostly spoke English, probably also to emphasize Ukraine’s connection to the West. Then he said, referring to Putin: “If he wants to kill himself, he doesn’t have to use his arsenal of nuclear weapons. He has to do what the guy in Berlin did in a bunker in 1945.”
By that he meant Adolf Hitler, who killed himself at the end of World War II. In normal times, that would have been received unanimously in New York as a derailment. In these times of war, Kyslytsya seemed to meet with cautious understanding with this statement, which was extreme by UN standards.