The UN secretary-general shows weakness in face of Russian attack

DNIPRO, UKRAINE, On May 20, 2026, an Iskander ballistic missile slammed into a warehouse in Dnipro, an industrial town about 60 miles from the front line, killing two workers. For the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other U.N. agencies, Dnipro was a hub. The U.N. rented space in a warehouse. UNHCR alone kept about a million dollars in supplies, plywood to board up shattered windows, emergency hygiene kits for those burned out of their apartments, tarps, and other goods, in the facility. Five days later, another Iskander destroyed World Food Programme stocks in Dnipro.

Visiting the still-smoldering warehouse housing UNHCR gear, two things became clear.

First, the attack was no accident. While the Russian military sometimes uses the presence of nearby factories or industrial sites to excuse its targeting of apartment blocks and schools as collateral damage, there were no such sites around the warehouse. Indeed, the warehouse abutted a World War II monument and sat down the street from a couple of ramshackle shops. The U.N. shares the location of its facilities and storage with both the Russian and Ukrainian governments and does not co-locate its facilities with anything related to the military.

Second, while the Kremlin also eschews responsibility by blaming damage on misfired Ukrainian interceptors, that was not the case in Dnipro. The U.N. issued its statement blaming the ballistic missile after forensic evidence showed the damage caused was entirely due to the Iskander.

The same day as Russia struck the WFP warehouse, the Kremlin warned foreign diplomats and U.N. agencies to leave Kyiv. To underscore the warning and like a mafioso making an offer not to be refused, Gennady Gatilov, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, hand-delivered the warning to U.N. officials. The UNHCR rightly held its ground.

If only Secretary General Antonio Guterres had the same moral backbone.

After Russia deliberately targeted U.N. facilities, the proper response is not silence. The U.N. might not castigate, but neutrality need not mean covering up inconvenient facts. The U.N. and the secretary-general himself recognize that Russia invaded Ukraine. The General Assembly deems Russia’s annexations of Ukrainian territory illegal. Therefore, Guterres need not obfuscate responsibility behind the excuse of fog of war or diplomatic nicety. To do so causes actual harm, as the Kremlin might interpret Guterres’s cowardice as a green light to hit U.N. targets again. Indeed, this is the reason why embassies refused to budge in the face of Russia’s warning.

Not every response needs to be public. Guterres might informally freeze U.N. hiring of Russian nationals into its various agencies. To announce a hiring moratorium might fall afoul of U.N. regulations, but Russian President Vladimir Putin understands subtlety, and he would see a shadow ban for what it was. Such a ban need not be permanent. When Moscow explains the hits and replaces the foods and humanitarian goods destroyed, Guterres might end such sanctions.

Alas, Dnipro is not the only example of Guterres’s cowardice. In Yemen, U.N. morale has plummeted. Swedish diplomat Hans Grundberg has served as Guterres’ special representative to Yemen since 2021. While the U.N. and the international community recognize a presidential council now based in Aden, Grundberg has maintained U.N. offices in Sana’a even as the Houthis have repeatedly kidnapped, imprisoned, and sometimes killed U.N. employees based in its territory. Rather than relocate U.N. offices to areas the internationally recognized government controls, Guterres allows the Houthis to tax aid and extort U.N. workers. Visiting Yemen last year, U.N. workers repeatedly expressed frustration at the secretary-general’s failure to stand up for their safety in the face of aggression. To a man and a woman, they argued that standing up to the Houthis rather than caving to their extortion would both protect them and better enable them to serve all Yemenis.

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The same pattern, of course, has existed in Gaza, where even the general counsel of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency raised alarms about Hamas infiltration, only to be ignored by U.N. leadership afraid to stand up to the threat of violence. Had the U.N. abided by its own regulations then rather than ignore Hamas inroads for the sake of diplomatic ease, it might have called out and prevented Hamas from building its tunnel network and using hospitals as headquarters. Folding in the face of terrorist threats may bring short-term quiet, but it always carries a far greater long-term cost.

From Ukraine to Yemen, the U.N. does important work, but so long as Guterres projects cowardice rather than leadership, he endangers all his employees.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.