US presidency of the UN Security Council

WASHINGTON — The USA on Tuesday took the helm of the United Nations Security Council for the month of August, a scheduled presidency that comes because the international body grapples with the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The diplomatic choreography of assuming the Security Council presidency — largely seen as procedural — gives the U.S. the chance to set the agenda for debates over the following month.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters during a briefing that the U.S. will concentrate on the defense of human rights and ways to mitigate food insecurity.

“We all know food security is national security,” she said, adding that “Russia has launched a full-scale assault on the world’s bread basket and it’s dead set on depriving the world of Ukraine’s grains.”

She reiterated U.S. calls for Russia to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the landmark U.N.-brokered agricultural deal between Ukraine and Russia that fell apart last month after nearly a 12 months in place.

Under the deal, greater than 1,000 ships carrying nearly 33 million metric tons of agricultural products departed from Ukraine’s war-weary Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, previously generally known as Yuzhny.

The agreement also facilitated the transport of 725,167 tons of wheat on World Food Program ships to a few of the most food-insecure countries on earth, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

In recent months, nevertheless, Russia had grown increasingly critical of the deal, claiming it’s weighted to favor Kyiv over Moscow.

Russia warned that if the Black Sea Grain Initiative didn’t incorporate fertilizer products into the exports, Moscow wouldn’t renew the agreement. Unlike food, fertilizer has yet to depart for global destinations.

“That is not the deal we agreed to on July 22,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during an April 26 briefing.

Following Moscow’s departure from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Russian forces rained missiles on Ukrainian ports and agricultural facilities, sending wheat prices on a three-day spike.

Read more: Russia axes landmark Ukraine grain deal just hours before deadline

Thomas-Greenfield also announced a high-level debate on Thursday that can be chaired by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The Security Council is made up of 15 members and tasked with the U.N.’s mission of “maintenance of international peace and security.”

The presidency rotates every month among the many members but only the five everlasting members hold veto authority on any measure proposed before the international forum.

The U.S. alongside the U.K., China, Russia and France are the five everlasting seat holders on the Security Council. The ten non-permanent members are elected to two-year terms by the U.N. General Assembly.

In April, Russia assumed the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, a move that got here on the heels of the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes committed during his invasion of Ukraine. The warrant is the primary time the ICC, a body of the United Nations, has taken such a measure against a pacesetter whose country is a everlasting member of the Security Council. 

In April, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya used the forum to advance pro-Kremlin narratives during his presidency.

The last time Nebenzya, presided over the body tasked with the “maintenance of international peace and security” was in February 2022, the identical month Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Read more: ‘A foul joke’: Ukraine cries foul as Russia takes the reins of the UN Security Council

Last 12 months, Thomas-Greenfield led efforts to remove Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council. She said on the time that Russia’s membership hurts the credibility of the council, “undermines the whole U.N. and it’s just plain improper.”