UN boss to nominate General Santos Cruz for fact-finding mission in Ukraine

Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, a former aide to President Bolsonaro. Photo: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/ABr

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday announced that he would nominate retired Lieutenant General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz of Brazil to lead a fact-finding mission in Ukraine.

“General Santos Cruz is a respected officer with over 40 years of national and international public security and military experience,” said Mr. Guterres in a press conference in Lviv, Ukraine.

The mission was requested by both the Ukrainian and Russian governments. It will investigate an incident that took place on July 29 in the Ukrainian town of Olenivka, in which prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists were killed.

“What happened there is unacceptable,” said Mr. Guterres.

Gen. Santos Cruz acted as force commander in two UN peacekeeping missions (PKOs): MINUSTAH, in Haiti, from 2007 to 2009, and MONUSCO, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 2013 to 2015.

In late 2017, also at Mr. Guterres’s request, Gen. Cruz drafted the so-called “Cruz report,” which included recommendations to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries in PKOs.

Gen. Cruz advocated a more proactive role for peacekeepers: “To deter and repel attacks and to defeat attackers, the United Nations needs to be strong and not fear to use force when necessary,” he wrote.

In Lviv, Mr. Guterres met the presidents of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Turkey, Recep Erdoğan.