David Lammy lashes out at Vladimir Putin in remarkable speech at UN

While wars, despotism, climate change, famine, greed and despair ravage much of the planet and its inhabitants, the United Nations remains a forum for diplomatic doublespeak. For apparent fidelity to international principles. For sugarcoating the poor and the displaced. For sincere calls for peace, for justice, for our shared humanity and kinship among peoples.

Joe Biden’s long speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, probably his last major address to an international gathering, was a classic of this genre. In an attempt to convey “a message of hope for the future,” he cited examples of parties that had managed to reconcile – such as Vietnam and the US, or Israel and Egypt – to make it clear that it was still possible to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.

He spoke of the need to avoid a large-scale regional conflict with Lebanon, to maintain support for Ukraine and to push for an end to the civil war in Sudan. He also called for continued action to combat climate change and expressed support for the US reform and expansion of the Security Council.

But Biden’s lofty aspirations seemed completely divorced from reality, given what’s actually happening on the ground in the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine — the latter hampered by its own government’s refusal to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons — as well as the near-total gridlock in the UN Security Council over how to address these and other crises around the world, let alone agree on how to reform itself.

He barely mentioned Iran’s meddling in the Middle East, or North Korea’s nuclear adventure, let alone the dangerous partnership it has entered into with Russia to sustain its aggression against Ukraine.

Biden had no qualms about trying to appeal to the better nature of his fellow leaders. But it came across as naïve, overly boastful, and disconnected from the facts. The rosy unreality of his speech was illustrated by his claim to have successfully ended the war in Afghanistan, while ignoring the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal, the abandonment of American allies, the devastating consequences for Afghan women since returned to Taliban rule, and the message of weakness it sent to dictators around the world.

I suspect that some of the applause for Biden when he explained his decision not to run for president a second time by saying that “some things are more important than staying in power” may have been more ironic than sincere.

The world is now in a much more messy state than when Biden took office. While many democratic governments around the world may have detested Trump and now fear a second Trump presidency, this does not automatically translate into enthusiasm for Biden’s handling of world affairs.

Where the US leads, the UK often timidly follows. For example, the UK has spent months hiding behind an abstention from successive UN resolutions on Gaza, to avoid having to take a clear position on the conduct of the war or on whether a Palestinian state should be established. The UK has also so far refrained from criticising Biden’s vacillation on Ukraine, at least not in public.

It was therefore unexpected and refreshing to hear the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, deliver a completely blunt speech about Russia, without the usual diplomatic nuances, at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council convened to discuss the Ukraine issue.

For once, there was no beating around the bush. In admirably concise and direct language, Lammy accused Russia of tearing up the UN Charter, and Putin of running a “mafia state” that he wanted to build into a mafia empire “built on corruption”.

Lammy directly addressed the Russian ambassador to the UN, whom he criticized for disrespectfully looking at his phone during his speech. He made a number of sharp remarks:

“Russia claims to represent the global south, but it flouts international law.”

“Vladimir Putin – if you fire missiles at Ukrainian hospitals, we know who you are”

“If you send mercenaries to African countries, we know who you are”

“If you kill opponents in European cities, we know who you are”

“Your invasion is in your own interest to expand your mafia state into a mafia empire. An empire built on corruption, robbing the Russian people and Ukraine. An empire built on suppressing dissent, courageous opponents, like Navalny, an empire built on lies, spreading disinformation at home and abroad, to sow disorder.”

In one particularly compelling passage, Lammy compared Russian behavior under Putin to that of a slave state: “I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, as a Foreign Secretary. But I say to the Russian representative that I also stand here as a black man, whose ancestors were taken from Africa in chains, with a gun in their hand, to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great uprising of the enslaved. Imperialism: I know it when I see it. And I will call it out for what it is.”

It is not the first time that a leading Western politician has criticized Putin, but all too often international condemnation focuses on Putin’s behavior – such as the invasion of Ukraine, the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, Russian mercenary activities in Africa, political repression at home, attempted assassinations abroad, and so on – rather than on the regime itself.

Lammy’s speech was so powerful because he rightly identified the true nature of the problem, namely Putin’s real character – who Putin is, not just what he does.

This is the same story that Russia’s closest neighbors – Poland, the Baltic states, Georgia and Moldova – have been telling for years, but which often falls on deaf ears in capitals further west, where some still hope for a new “reset” with Russia.

The situation reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog – in which a frog is persuaded to carry a scorpion across a river after the scorpion promises not to sting him. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, drowning them both. As they lie dying, the scorpion apologizes to the frog, but says he couldn’t help it because “it’s in my nature.”

The reason there can be no negotiated peace with Russia over Ukraine, as some misguided Western politicians still naively believe, is because it is not in Russia’s nature to abide by a peace agreement. An agreement would be only temporary, allowing Russia to regroup and rearm and wait for another opportunity to attack its neighbors.

Putin’s regime is fragile and hollow at its core, surviving only on domestic repression and fanciful ideas of imperial revival abroad.

That is why Lammy was right when he ended his speech with the words: “Ukraine’s struggle matters to all of us… This is the stake: if we allow an imperialist to redraw the borders by force, they will not be the last borders that will have to be redrawn.”

Biden’s message of hope at the UN was misplaced. Hope is not policy. What was needed was strength and determination.

Biden has also never successfully made it clear to the American people why they should continue to support Ukraine, or convinced them that he has a strategy for winning. This is one of the reasons behind the decline in support for Ukraine in Congress, although of course the hostility of Donald Trump is the main factor on the Republican side.

Lammy’s speech was more realistic and hit the right note in terms of defining the problem, and he also made it clear that he intended to remain Ukraine’s “most loyal ally.”

But can the UK and its Western allies deliver in practice at a time of pressure on defence budgets, war weariness and growing isolationist sentiment? We need to be with Ukraine, not just while it lasts, but whatever the cost.

Read Lammy’s speech here.