Russia’s UN ambassador says it’s “alarming” that lower than three weeks earlier than the annual assembly of world leaders on the UN General Assembly not a single member of the 56-member Russian advance workforce and delegation headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has acquired a US entry visa.
Vassily Nebenzia stated in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres obtained Friday evening by The Associated Press that “this is even more alarming since for the last several months the authorities of the United States have been constantly refusing to grant entry visas to a number of Russian delegates assigned to take part in the official United Nations events.” The Russian ambassador harassed that the United States, because the host nation of the United Nations, is legally required to subject visas, including that software to attend the high-level UN conferences beginning September 19 had been submitted to the US Embassy in Moscow.
Nebenzia requested Guterres “to once again emphasize to the authorities of the United States that they must promptly issue requested visas for all Russian delegates and accompanying persons,” together with journalists overlaying Lavrov’s go to.
Already dangerous relations between the United States and Russia have worsened dramatically since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration sees Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warfare in Ukraine as essentially the most acute and quick menace to worldwide stability, and it has been main a world coalition supporting Ukraine.
A spokesperson for the US Mission to the United Nations stated the United States takes its host nation obligations significantly and processes “hundreds of visas every year for Russian Federation delegates to UN events.” “To ensure timely processing, we repeatedly remind the Russian Mission to the UN, as we do all other UN missions, that the United States needs applications as early as possible,” stated the spokesperson, who was not authorised to be quoted by identify.
“This is especially important,” the US spokesperson stated, “because of Russia’s unwarranted actions against our embassy in Russia, including the forced termination of local and third country national staff, which have severely limited our staffing and therefore our capacity to process visas.”
In his letter, Nebenzia stated among the many final examples of US refusals to grant entry visas had been to Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev to take part within the simply ended UN chiefs of police summit and to Russian representatives looking for to attend a gathering that started August 29 and continues till September 9 on drafting an “International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.”
The Russian ambassador quoted from the 1947 settlement between the United Nations and the United States which states that “visas shall be granted without charge and as promptly as possible” and that this “shall be applicable irrespective of the relations existing between the governments of the persons referred to … and the government of the United States.” UN affiliate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez stated the United Nations stays in shut contact with the US on points beneath the UN-US headquarters settlement together with visas, and “we are doing so in this case” raised by Russia.