The appointment of Russia as President of the United Nations has cast a doubt on the integrity of its role in maintaining international peace and security. In 2001, I was closely involved in the efforts to improve its peacekeeping capability under the leadership of Lakhdar Brahimi. Unfortunately, all the lessons that were learned following his influential report appear to be forgotten twenty years on and the UN has regressed in its stated aims.
The problem should not simply be defined in terms of the relationship between the USA and Russia because at its heart, there is the ideological question about the relationship between the individual and the state. The origins of this impasse were founded just over 100 years ago, when an international coalition fought against the Bolsheviks who had taken control in Moscow. On Tuesday 11 April, I will be touching on this subject in my talk “A Christmas Card from Siberia” when I tell the story of the last British prisoners-of-war in World War I. Tickets for the evening event at Dartmouth House in London are available on the English Speaking Union website: https://www.esu.org/event/churchills-abandoned-prisoners-with-rupert-wieloch/
British Prisoners of War at Captured at Krasnoyarsk on Russian Christmas Eve 1920
Rupert Wieloch 