Exclusive: “What We Do At The UN Still Matters” — US Amb To UN

What You Need To Know:
✔️ There is a frustration with the way the UN struggles to protect Ukraine, its founding member, from attacks on territorial integrity;
✔️ ‘What we do at the UN still matters, even if it is true that we can’t get Russia sanction itself’;
✔️ There's a substantial deficit of international aid for millions of Ukrainians, displaced by the war. “Every [aid] dollar is being spread across multiply crises”, Ambassador Power explains;
✔️ It's possible for realpolitik & human rights go hand in hand together.

While sitting down for an exclusive interview, we asked Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations if she is also frustrated with inability of the United States to protect Ukraine, its founding member from attacks on territorial integrity. “I’m extremely frustrated, above all with Russia and Russian aggression”, Power replies: “The UN system, it is not a secret, is vulnerable when a founding, permanent member of the Security Council with a veto decides it is going to toss the UN Charter out of the window and try to take over a territory belonging to its neighbor.”
Still, despite institutional crisis at the UN’s Security Council, which was exposed by the Ukrainian crisis, Ambassador Power defends the organization and its relevance: ‘What we do at the UN still matters, even if it is true that we can’t get Russia sanction itself.’ Power points out to, in her opinion, important work that the UN does defending the system of international law.
Samantha Power also acknowledges a substantial deficit of international aid for millions of Ukrainians, displaced by the war. “There are so many challenges around the world that every [aid] dollar is being spread across multiply crises”, she explains.
Maxim Eristavi spoke to Samantha Power on June 11th, 2015 in Kyiv.