By CECILIA OLOGUNAGBA

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, will meet with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday to appeal for peace and to get the Kremlin to cease its war ith Ukraine.

Associate Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Ms Eri Kaneko, disclosed this at a news conference on Friday in New York.

“The Secretary-General will visit Moscow on April 26th. He will have a working meeting and lunch with Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov.

“The Secretary-General will be received by President Vladimir Putin,” she said.

The UN correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Guterres had on Wednesday written to leaders of Russia and Ukraine to request meetings with them.

The UN chief requested meeting with them face-to-face in their respective capitals in efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, said that Guterres had asked the Russian President, Putin, to receive him in Moscow and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to receive him in Kyiv.

Dujarric said the letters were handed over to the countries’ UN Missions in New York on Tuesday.

“The secretary-general said he would like to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine and the future of multilateralism based on the Charter of the UN and international law.

“He noted that both Ukraine and the Russian Federation are founding members of the United Nations and have always been strong supporters of this Organisation,” he said.

Russia is one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and a founding nation of the United Nations.

Its war in Ukraine is described by a majority of other Security Council members as a violation of the UN treaty and charter.

Russia’s veto power on the Security Council has blocked measures aimed at recording condemnation on the invasion of Ukraine.

The General Assembly has voted twice on resolutions condemning Moscow as the aggressor in the conflict and suspended Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council of the UN. (NAN)