Further to our 16th of August comment…
When we entitled this series of comments Death of Diplomacy we intended this as a metaphorical rebuke to wayward governments. This week the death of prominent ‘actors’ has been sought by their opponents, or at least, such representatives have been put at the ultimate risk.
In Ukraine, the former speaker of parliament Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in the streets of Lviv by a so-far unidentified gunman. Mr Parubiy was a leading participant in the mass movement of 2014 which brought down the country’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
In Yemen, the Houthi prime minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi and other leaders were killed in what officials said was an Israeli air strike on the capital, Sanaa.
A day before, Russian missile shrapnel hit the British Council premises in Kyiv, injuring one of its officials, and European Union offices were struck by one or more of the 629 missiles launched by Russia in a single night. As the EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said, “No diplomatic mission should ever be a target.” This was supposed to be the convention in times of war, but the fact is that either by design or accident, such offices came under fire. What was touted as a peace effort by President Trump in Alaska earlier in the month has seemingly got nowhere.
The polite government-level games of a bygone era have vanished into air – to be replaced by bloodshed.
