The longest lasting of the false-flag operations conducted against Russia since the Special Military Operation started in February 2022 has been flying the flag of the United Nations (UN).

The chief flag-bearer has been the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, a Portuguese (lead image, left); he has manipulated, plotted, and lied his way through the Ukrainian hostage-taking at Azovstal, during the Battle of Mariupol;  the Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant; and Ukrainian attempts to break the ports blockade with what the UN has been calling its “Black Sea Grain Initiative”.   

Reinforcing Guterres in these schemes of deceit have been his spokesman, American and Frenchman Stéphane Dujarric (Rothschild),  Argentine Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);  and the negotiator of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, British lawyer Martin Griffiths (lead image, right)  and https://twitter.com/. Griffiths came to his UN job from a Geneva organization funded by the anti-Russian governments of Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, the UK, Australia, Ireland, and Switzerland. It calls itself “The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue”.  

Guterres’s bluff was called a year ago, on April 26, at the long-table incident in Moscow when President Vladimir Putin told Guterres he was wrong on the facts, biased in his public statements, and acting in violation of his UN authority.  

“You can call it whatever name you like and have whatever bias in favour of those who did it, “ Putin told Guterres after getting him to confirm that the earphone to his interpreter was working. “But this was really an anti-constitutional coup. Unfortunately, our colleagues in the West preferred to ignore all this. After we recognised the independence of these states [Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics], they asked us to render them military aid because they were subjected to military actions, an armed aggression. In accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Chapter VII, we were forced to do this by launching a special military operation…[About the Battle of Mariupol and the Azovstal hostages] Mr Secretary-General, you have been misled…The simplest thing for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.”  

Putin did not shake hands to greet Guterres; he placed him further away than any head of state had ever been seated in conversation at the Kremlin before; Guterres squirmed.  To CNN a day later in Kiev, Guterres lied about what had been said at the meeting.   Later, when asked in New York to say what and when he knew of the foreign combatants at Azovstal, and the use of civilian hostage shields in the battle, Guterres refused to answer.   

The Russian Foreign Ministry has been more explicit in its condemnation of Guterres than of any UN secretary-general before him. “Contrary to the requirements in the UN Charter,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman declared last July, “the [Guterres’ staff] Secretariat is not taking an equidistant position, as one would expect from a Secretariat of the most authoritative international organisation that is designed, among other things, to promote the settlement of disputes.”  

“I would like to remind our esteemed colleagues from the UN Secretariat”, according to Maria Zakharova at the ministry, “that their job is not to take sides in situations of dispute, but to help maintain peace and stability. This is what they are paid for and this is their mandate.”

On September 29, the Foreign Ministry announced: “The relevant functions do not give the Managing Director [Guterres] of the UN Secretariat the right to make biased political statements on behalf of the entire [UN] Organization. Nor is such a person authorized to interpret the norms of the Charter and documents of the General Assembly, including the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation between States in Accordance with the UN Charter… Obviously, A[ntonio] Guterres has not only exceeded his authority, but actually taken sides with the collective West, again resorting to a selective approach in the interpretation of the unfolding events.”  

“We consider unacceptable the fact that the UN Secretary-General has become an instrument of propaganda and pressure on Member States at a time when he should be guided by the UN Charter in its entirety.”

The defeat of the Ukrainian and NATO forces on the battlefield has gradually diminished the value to the US and NATO of the role of the UN Security Council and of Secretary-General Guterres. This has left Grossi exposed as playing the role of spokesman for Kiev when war operations caused the biggest radiation release so far into the atmosphere on May 13 as   Ukrainian army stocks of depleted uranium shells were blown up at Khmelnitsky.  

In the war over food stocks – the attempt to stop Russia exporting grain and crop fertilizers, and to use Ukrainian grain exports to recover Black Sea ports and to conceal attacks on Russian targets  – the role of Griffiths as the UN go-between has failed comprehensively, and for the same reason that Guterres and Grossi have failed. Griffiths told the UN on May 23 that the Ukraine is the victim of Russian attacks based on Kiev press releases. “The biggest challenge remains the impediments to reaching all areas in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia currently under the military control of the Russian Federation.”

Griffiths also claimed that “in recent weeks, we have engaged in intensive discussions with the parties to the Black Sea Initiative, to secure agreement on its extension and the improvements needed for it to operate effectively and predictably. This will continue over the coming days.”

In fact, Griffiths and UN officials cannot “engage” with the Russian side because they are no longer trusted. Griffiths’ claim that he and his staff have “continued to deliver a wide range of support with concrete results under the Memorandum of Understanding on the facilitation of Russian food and fertilizer exports” is false.

The Russian response is that Grossi and Griffiths have been following “illegal instructions to his subordinates” from Guterres.  

The Russian government has repeatedly accused the UN and the Ukrainians of refusing to honour the reciprocal export provisions of the food export initiative, so that Russian grain and fertilizers will not be blocked in the European ports,  or at sea where vessels carrying the Russian cargoes have been denied Anglo-American insurance. The UN publications, statements and press releases published by Guterres’s staff have reported the full 26-paragraph text of the grain agreement;   they have omitted the text of the fertilizer agreement.  The combination of the two makes the difference between the grain deal and the real deal:  for the Russians the latter was the precondition for their agreement to the former.

 Guterres’s office has acknowledged that the real deal was more than the grain deal, and that compliance also required the US, the UK and the European Union (EU) states to lift the sanctions they have imposed on Russian shipping, port access, vessel insurance, and commodity exports.  “An agreement was also reached with the Russian Federation,” Guterres’s press office announced on July 22, 2022, “on the scope of engagement of the United Nations to facilitate the unimpeded exports to world markets of Russian food and fertilizer – including the raw materials required to produce fertilizers.  This agreement is based on the principle that measures imposed on the Russian Federation do not apply to these products. Simultaneously, the Russian Federation has committed to facilitate the unimpeded export of food, sunflower oil and fertilizers from Ukrainian controlled Black Sea ports.”   

Of the 43 releases which have followed from Guterres’s office since last July,    not a single statement, press release, report,  or update identifies the terms of agreement on Russian grain and fertilizer exports, or acknowledges Russian protests against Ukrainian, UN, EU,  and US  non-compliance.

On March 23, Griffiths announced he had met Russian officials, and claimed:  “The discussions focused on the implementation of the two agreements signed on 22 July 2022: the Black Sea Grain Initiative between the Russian Federation, Türkiye, Ukraine and the United Nations; and the Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Federation and the UN, to facilitate unimpeded exports of food and fertilizer. The UN Secretary-General expressed today that the UN remains fully committed to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, as well as to efforts to facilitate the export of Russian food and fertilizer.”  

Griffith’s last sentence was lying. The Russians had told him they would agree to extend the grain deal until July on condition Guterres and Griffiths did what they promised they were doing. They didn’t.

Because Guterres and Griffiths refused, Russian officials have announced that the current 120-day extension of the grain deal to July 17 will be the last. In the meantime, because Russian ammonia exports are still stopped, Ukrainian grain cargoes have been blocked from Odessa and Chernomorsk, and restricted to Yuzhny (aka Pivdennyi).   In retaliation, the Ukrainians have attacked the  new ammonia and LPG export terminals at Taman with drones.  

On June 1, Guterres and Griffiths acknowledged the ammonia restriction, but they refuse to reveal publicly their role in preventing the removal of the fertilizer blockade. “The Russian Federation has informed the JCC [Joint Coordination Centre] of its decision to limit registrations to the port of Yuzhny/Pivdennyi as long as ammonia is not exported. And currently, it is not. Since 24 May, the number of inspection teams at the JCC has been reduced from three to two. The limited registrations and reduced inspection teams contributed to the drop of the average daily inspection rate down to three. This is a very serious situation. We need to move forward. The Initiative is bound for renewal on 17 July. Global hunger hotspots are increasing — as we have been notifying you on a regular basis — and the spectre of food inflation and market volatility lurks in all countries.”  

This new UN statement also concealed that Ukrainian officials in Kiev were attempting to change the terms of the July 22, 2022, deal, adding ports and other commodities to the original terms.

This was a serious violation of the July 2022 agreement, and it threatened the negotiations for a new  extension of the grain deal. Russia dismissed it peremptorily. On May 24, Zakharova was asked at her weekly ministry briefing to comment on a Reuters news agency report that “Ukraine would unblock Russian ammonia transit only if the grain deal was expanded. In particular, the source mentioned expansion of the list of goods to be exported and increasing the number of ports. Is Russia considering an option of expanding the deal format taking into account guarantees to unblock ammonia transit?”

Zakharova replied: “I can say that in the context that you mentioned, the Russian side has repeatedly made its position known to other stakeholders during expert meetings that expanding these two categories [the list of goods and the number of ports] is out of the question.” 

On June 1, Sergei Vershinin, the Russian Foreign Ministry counterpart for Griffiths, told the press: “Our position remains unchanged – ammonia exports are part of the existing agreements and were supposed to start simultaneously with Ukrainian grain shipping. This fully corresponds to Mr Guterres’s announced goals on ensuring global food security, and there is no room for any additional demands in this respect. We have repeatedly explained this position to UN officials, as well as to the representatives of Türkiye and Ukraine as the parties to the Black Sea Initiative, including at the Istanbul meeting on May 10-11. It is even more surprising that being fully aware of our position, the UN Secretariat continues to exploit the ammonia issue in a bid to create a semblance of some new effort and contact. Moreover, the lack of any result is obvious – the ammonia pipeline has not been operating. Without resolving this problem and the four others I mentioned, there is no way to continue the Black Sea Initiative after July 17, not to mention any discussion of additional ports or the expansion of the range of Ukrainian exports.”  

To date, Russian officials have not commented on the weaponization of the appointments Guterres and Griffiths have made to the Black Sea Grain Initiative; the Russians have concentrated their fire on Guterres. He has ignored them; he was reappointed to a second term as secretary-general from January 2022 until December 2026, and cannot run for a third term.

Preoccupied by the battlefield developments and the sanctions war, the Russian media have largely ignored the food war. Without Russian bloggers to rely on, the alternative media in the US have also missed what Guterres and Griffiths have been doing. What follows is a rare analysis  in Russian, published last week, of the new moves the Russian government will make in the food war.  It appeared in Vzglyad, the bellwether of Russian security analysts; the translation is verbatim, without editing. Illustrations have been added.  

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