The reaction over Charlie Kirk’s assassination touched yet another constituency this week: the collection of world leaders gathered at the United Nations.
Two weeks after Kirk was shot and killed in Utah, several of the world leaders gathered at for the UN General Assembly this week referenced the conservative activist’s slaying — and some of the divisive outpouring of reaction to it — as evidence of deeper fissures in global society.
Decrying the “sick expression of joy for the crime committed against an innocent person,” Serbian President Alexsandar Vucic told assembled leaders on Wednesday that reaction to Kirk’s death represents “the best confirmation of that.”
Social media lit up in the days after Kirk’s Sept. 10 death with people mourning his loss — some of whom said they disagreed with Kirk’s ideological stances but supported his right to voice them — as well as those celebrating it.
It set off a national discussion about freedom of speech. Comments led to the firings of numerous people, from political analysts and opinion writers to school employees. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory, targeting everyone from journalists to teachers.
On Wednesday, Vucic said reaction to the conservative activist’s assassination was demarcated “less by ideological but much more by emotional hate driven differences.”
“Such a development devastates in a deepest and clearest way the world political community much more than conflicts with clear and visible actors,” Vucic said, remarking on how such a seemingly singular event can evoke such strong reactions across the globe.
“He was savagely assassinated just because his killer did not like his ideas,” Vucic said of Kirk, suggesting that some of the reaction in the slaying’s aftermath caused yet more damage in terms of the division it sowed. “He was shot even after death by the same ones who had prepared political and media grounds for his assassination.”
Kirk was assassinated during a Sept. 10 event at Utah Valley University. US President Donald Trump and other administration leaders gathered Sunday at a memorial service, where other speakers noted the worldwide reaction to Kirk’s death, mentioning areas around the world where memorials had sprung up.
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña also mentioned Kirk in his speech Wednesday, saying in Spanish that he was “shaken, saddened, and distressed” by Kirk’s killing and arguing that the “macabre response must awaken us from our sleepy state of complacency.”
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned Kirk, as well as last month’s stabbing death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail system, as representative of “headlines about violent attacks happening all around the world.”
“Sadly, his life was short by a bullet,” Zelensky said of Kirk. “Once again, violence with a rifle in hand.”
Some leaders at UN condemn ‘sick expression of joy,’ ‘macabre response’ to Charlie Kirk’s killing
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Some leaders at UN condemn ‘sick expression of joy,’ ‘macabre response’ to Charlie Kirk’s killing
- Decrying the “sick expression of joy for the crime committed against an innocent person,” Serbian President Alexsandar Vucic told assembled leaders on Wednesday
Zelensky holds ‘very substantive’ call with US envoys Witkoff and Kushner
- Trump’s team is trying to swiftly settle the conflict in Ukraine, which has run for nearly four years
KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he and his negotiators who are discussing a US-led plan for Ukraine had a “very substantive and constructive” call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“Ukraine is committed to continuing to work honestly with the American side to bring about real peace,” Zelensky said on Telegram as the third day of the talks were to be held in Florida.
“We agreed on the next steps and the format of the talks with America,” he added.
Zelensky, who was in Kyiv, joined the call with top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and Andriy Gnatov, the chief of staff of Kyiv’s armed forces, both of whom were in Miami for the talks with the US side.
The two Americans — Witkoff, who is US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, and Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law — had been meeting with Umerov and Gnatov since Thursday.
Trump’s team is trying to swiftly settle the conflict in Ukraine, which has run for nearly four years.
An initial US plan released two weeks ago was seen by Kyiv and its European allies as aligning too closely with many of Russia’s hard-line positions, and has since been revised.
Zelensky said the call with Witkoff and Kushner “focused on many aspects and quickly discussed key issues that could guarantee an end to the bloodshed and remove the threat of a third Russian invasion, as well as the threat of Russia failing to fulfil its promises, as has happened many times in the past.”
He said he was waiting a “detailed report” from Umerov and Gnatov.
“We cannot discuss everything over the phone, so we need to work in detail with the teams on ideas and proposals,” he added.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s approach to the negotiations was that “everything must be capable of working, every important thing for peace, security and reconstruction.”
French President Emmanuel Macon said on Saturday that he, Zelensky, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would meet in London on Monday to “take stock” of the US-led negotiations.
