Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has said Western governments should stop sending weapons to Ukraine and that a “political calculation” inside US-led NATO is keeping the war going in order to have “a weak Europe”.
She spoke on September 19 at the Festival di Open in Parma, northern Italy, an event organised by Italian news website Open. Her mandate, created by the UN Human Rights Council, covers human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Albanese has held it since 2022 and it was renewed in 2025. It does not cover Russia’s war against Ukraine, NATO or European security policy.
Albanese said there had been “an aggression” and that “there is no doubt Russia invaded Ukraine”. She added at once that “a number of reasons” had led to the war.
She said she had told Western diplomats that, after the Russian invasion, they had applied international law “from A to Z” but had not done the same over Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians.
The political calculation that kept “that front” open, she said, “does not originate in Europe, but inside NATO, NATO led by the United States”.
“I honestly think it may be convenient to have a weak Europe, and that is why that front remains open, with a great sacrifice of human lives, first of all Ukrainian lives.”
Her remarks came as the US administration of Donald Trump had pushed for peace talks with Moscow and shifted from donating weapons to Kyiv to selling them to NATO allies that pass them on to Ukraine.
She said she agreed with those who think “we need to stop sending weapons to Ukraine and bring the discussion back into the political space”.
She also said Ukraine was being used to justify “that horrible narrative that we are already at war and it is a hybrid war”. Asked how the war should end, she said: “I don’t have the solution because I’m not an expert.”
She cited Italy’s constitutional repudiation of war as an instrument for settling disputes, enshrined in Article 11 of the Italian Constitution.
The remarks were circulated by accounts that promote the Kremlin line, including Russia Direct, which highlighted her UN title and the line “We should stop sending weapons to Ukraine.”
On September 22 the Geneva-based watchdog UN Watch wrote to UN Secretary-General António Guterres asking him to condemn the comments.
It said she had used her office to push personal views outside her mandate and had breached the Human Rights Council code of conduct. The code requires mandate-holders to “focus exclusively on the implementation of their mandate” and to keep personal political opinions from prejudicing their work.
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said Albanese had suggested there were “reasons” for Russia’s aggression and then “sought to deprive its victim of the means to defend itself”.
Guterres has not issued a public reply.
NATO and EU governments treat arms for Ukraine as collective defence of a state under invasion, not as a device to weaken Europe. Allies still fund air defence and munitions through the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) and related schemes.
Kyiv says it cannot hold the line without those deliveries. Moscow has occupied Ukrainian territory since 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Albanese has spent her tenure arguing that Western arms supplies to Israel make states complicit in what she calls genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel rejects.
Her past remarks have repeatedly drawn criticism. In a 2014 Facebook post she wrote that America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and Europe by “the sense of guilt about the Holocaust”. She later said, though, that she would not use that language again.
After October 7, 2023 she posted that “today’s violence must be put in context”. In February 2024 she told French President Emmanuel Macron that the dead that day “were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression”.
In a 2025 interview she said kibbutz civilians were attacked “because they are occupiers” on land from which Gazans came, and called the massacre “the reminder” of “unhealed wounds”.
She has said killing soldiers that day was “not an international crime” and that there was “not a shred of proof” of mass rape despite a March 2024 UN report finding otherwise. She has also said “you don’t need gas chambers and machetes to have genocide”.
She has compared Israel’s conduct to the Third Reich, called for Israel to be unseated from the UN and urged a halt to all military, trade and diplomatic ties until what she terms genocide, occupation and apartheid end. She denies anti-Semitism and says she condemns attacks on civilians.
Israel has treated Albanese as an adversary since she took the Palestine mandate in 2022. Jerusalem denies her entry, under a ban imposed in February 2024 over her words to Macron, and has pressed for her removal.
On July 9, 2025 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sanctioned her under an executive order targeting the International Criminal Court. He accused her of “political and economic warfare” against the United States and Israel and of “unabashed anti-Semitism”.
The same years have brought her a string of Western honours. Three Flemish universities (Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels) gave her a joint honorary doctorate on April 2 for “outstanding commitment to human rights and international justice”.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez awarded her the Order of Civil Merit on May 7. A day earlier he had asked the European Commission to activate the EU Blocking Statute to neutralise US sanctions against her within the bloc.
She has received the Dutch Dries van Agt Prize, awarded in 2025 by The Rights Forum, and Italy’s Stefano Chiarini Award.
UN RAPPORTEUR: “WE NEED TO STOP SENDING WEAPONS TO UKRAINE”
Russia invaded Ukraine, but “there are a number of reasons that led to that war…”
She accuses “NATO led by the United States” of “a political calculation to have a weak Europe. . .That’s why that front remains open.” pic.twitter.com/HH6J1T3Qek— UN Watch (@UNWatch) September 22, 2026
