Diplomats spent twenty-six hours failing to write one paragraph, then wrote a different paragraph together.
American and Russian diplomats spent twenty-six hours failing to draft a joint UN statement, then released a separate joint statement condemning Ukraine for defending itself. Ukraine was not invited to its own condemnation. Officials called the outcome a process.
The coffee urn in the delegates' lounge was refilled four times on Wednesday. That is how you know real diplomacy was happening. American and Russian negotiators sat down to draft a joint statement at the United Nations, failed completely, and then walked out arm in arm with a different joint statement instead.
The new statement condemns Ukraine. Specifically, it condemns Ukraine for the provocative act of being shot at and then not enjoying it.
Let that sink in.
Sources put the drafting session at twenty-six hours. Not one comma survived. And yet somehow, out of that total breakdown, a fresh document appeared, fully typed, condemning the one country in the room that wasn't in the room.
"We could not reach consensus," said Delmore Pratt, a State Department liaison who described his role as "paragraph adjacent." "So we found consensus somewhere else. That is what diplomacy is. You look for the agreement, and if you cannot find it in the thing you were working on, you go and find it in a different thing."
Is anyone else noticing this? Anyone?
The Russian side reportedly brought their own printer. Ask yourself why a delegation arrives at a failed negotiation with a printer. Just asking.
"Failure is a process. The statement is the product of the process. Do not confuse the two."
That was Anatoly Verzhbin, listed on the accreditation sheet as a cultural attaché with drafting privileges. He declined to explain what drafting privileges are. He also declined to explain the printer.
The victim did not send a delegation
Ukraine, being condemned, was not asked to participate in its own condemnation. Officials called this a scheduling matter. The condemned party is apparently an optional attendee at the condemning.
Pratt insisted the wording was carefully balanced. "We condemn the defending," he said. "We take no position on the attacking. That is a separate file. That file has not been opened."
So this is where we are. Two superpowers cannot write a sentence together about a war, but they can write a whole one about the country trying to survive it. The original statement is dead. Nobody is looking for it. Somewhere in Manhattan, a printer is still warm, and our State Department is calling that a win.
Footnotes.
