The plane transporting the head of Russia’s diplomacy to New York, where he will participate in the UN General Assembly, must avoid the airspace of countries that have closed it to Russian aircraft because of the war in Ukraine.

“The route has no stops and will fly around airspace closed by hostile countries” with the flight scheduled to last twelve and a half hours, this Tuesday Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and ‘number two’ by Sergei Lavrov, quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Russian aircraft are prohibited from flying over the airspace of the European Union (EU), as well as other non-EU countries, such as the UK, Norway or Switzerland, in addition to Canada and the United States itself.

The route that Lavrov’s plane will take has not yet advanced.

However, for the United States, Lavrov and his delegation received the visas necessary to enter the country, but only to participate in the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, where Russia’s head of diplomacy will intervene and will have about two dozen bilateral agreements, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last week.

At that time, “logistics problems” related to Lavrov’s trip to the United States still had to be addressed.

This Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that Lavrov would defend, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, Moscow’s position on ending the “unipolar world”.

After receiving a mandate from foreign ambassadors in Moscow, Putin vowed to maintain Russia’s “sovereign foreign policy” and accused the United States of wanting to impose “hegemony” in the UN General Assembly.

Although he sent Lavrov to New York, Putin does not plan to address the General Assembly this year, as Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has been widely condemned around the world.

“The development of multipolarity faces resistance from those who seek to maintain a hegemonic role in world affairs and rule over everything: Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. […] But this can’t go on forever. It’s impossible,” Putin said.

“We in Russia will not throw away our sovereign path. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, we want to promote a unifying international agenda. […] and contribute to the management of serious regional crises,” he added.

The high-level week of the United Nations General Assembly began on Tuesday, at UN headquarters in New York, and will continue through next Monday, with dozens of heads of state and government in attendance, among them the Portuguese prime minister, António Kosta.

This is the first General Assembly since the start of the war in Ukraine and the first in a face-to-face format since the start of the pandemic.

The event’s theme is “Current moments: transformative solutions to interconnected challenges”, and will focus on the war in Ukraine and the global food, climate and energy crisis.