A group of Ukrainians, including a former high-ranking diplomat, have cooked up a quixotic plan to strip Russia of one of its most effective political weapons: its platform as a member of the United Nations.
They’re trying to do this on a technical question. Is Russia, as it exists today, a legitimate member of the U.N.?
A group of Ukrainians, including a former high-ranking diplomat, have cooked up a quixotic plan to strip Russia of one of its most effective political weapons: its platform as a member of the United Nations.
They’re trying to do this on a technical question. Is Russia, as it exists today, a legitimate member of the U.N.?
Due to the early politics of the United Nations, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) had three seats within the organization—the USSR, the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR. The USSR itself was, technically, a federation of many different Soviet republics—including the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic itself.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, its component parts became states—and so, the Ukrainian team argues, the Russian Federation was a new state, not a simple name change from the USSR. States that change their name can be recognized as doing so at the U.N. so simply by sending notification, but the process for recognizing a new state is longer and more complicated.
Volodymyr Yelchenko, Ukraine’s former ambassador to the U.N. and an expert member of the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, a nongovernmental organization named after the man who authored Ukraine’s first constitution in 1710, argued that the acceptance of the newly created Russia as the successor of the USSR was a mistake.
“It is the greatest fraud of the century; the Russian Federation never signed the U.N. Charter,” Yelchenko said.
Other nations created from the dissolution of larger states have gone through a more elaborate process of formally joining the U.N., But the time, Russia simply wrote an informal letter, rather than undergoing a formal admission vote under Article 4 of the U.N. Charter.
“Bosnia-Herzegovina went through this process, in line with Article 4, in 1992, following the collapse of Yugoslavia,” Yelchenko said. “But the Russians did no such thing; they just changed the nameplate at the table.”
The practical chance of the United Nations suspending Russia on a technicality, let alone removing it from its Security Council seat, is extremely slim. But the Ukrainian team sees advantages even in forcing the discussion. Yelchenko and his colleagues at the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation have already outlined how to begin the process.
First, they plan for the Ukrainian and other like-minded delegations to ask for issue to be on the formal agenda at the U.N. General Assembly, possibly as early as the next year. They hope that having the debate in public will frustrate the Kremlin and lead to wider discussions about whether or not Russia, were it to apply today, would meet the criteria under Article 4 as being a “peace-loving” state that accepts the “obligations contained in the present Charter” and is “able and willing to carry out these obligations.”
As part of this request, they would ask for Russia to be referred to the U.N.’s nine-member Credentials Committee. While the committee does not require a unanimous decision to produce a report, Russia, China, and the United States all have permanent seats, making any action effectively impossible. However, that doesn’t prohibit the General Assembly from holding a vote on the motion—a vote that would be satisfied by a simple majority on the assembly floor. While the Security Council has the power to veto substantial resolutions, it has no power over procedural decisions by the General Assembly.
There is historic precedent for a U.N. member having its credentials frozen, as happened to apartheid South Africa in 1974, meaning that country’s delegates cannot participate in any way. While this was effective, the process remains controversial to this day. Ukraine has managed to get widespread support for past U.N. motions condemning Russia’s invasion, but it might find it harder to find allies willing to push for a suspension of Russian participation.
Why put so much effort into trying to delegitimize Russia at the U.N., when Russian missiles are hitting Ukrainian cities daily? Yelchenko said that the reason is simple: “Russia uses the U.N. for a lot of things, like using its veto to protect itself and other aggressors. … But it also uses the U.N. as a megaphone to shout propaganda.”
Yelchenko and his colleagues at Pylyp Orlyk are under no illusions about the unlikelihood of the process. Others are also skeptical and worry that it may cost Ukraine valuable political capital with its international allies.
“While there is huge sympathy for Ukraine among many U.N. members, the process would no doubt be politically complicated” said Jane Kinninmont, the CEO of the United Nations Association-UK, an official U.N. group. “Aside from the legal questions they want to ask, there is a political reality that many U.N. members do not see Russia as the only country abusing its veto power at the Security Council.”
Another factor that complicates the argument for freezing Russia’s participation at the U.N. is the internationally accepted status of the Russian Federation as the successor state to the USSR. Diplomats worked to secure an agreement that international ties would remain, ensuring the continuity of foreign embassies within Russia and Russian embassies around the world.
The Ukrainian government of the time accepted the status of Russia as the successor state, partly so that Russia would assume the sovereign debt of the Soviet Union, leaving the newly independent states with a blank slate financially. That makes it trickier to argue that Russia was not also the USSR’s successor state at the United Nations.
Others fear that the plan is diplomatically risky. A number of officials and diplomats who are friendly with Kyiv and aware of the plan—who asked not to be named so they could speak candidly—worried about asking allies to pour political capital into a project that, if it publicly fails, could lose Ukraine sympathy. They particularly worry about sentiment in Europe, where war fatigue is growing and French and German elections, among others, threaten to put pro-Russian parties in power.
Members of the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation staff said that they understand these concerns—but they still think it’s worth pressing the issue. They argue that putting an issue like this, with no direct link to the war, before the General Assembly gives members very little cover to hide from a fundamental question: Are you still too scared to stand up to Russia, even on a matter of U.N. process?
“This may sound crazy, but if you examine the facts and rules, Russia is not a member of the U.N.,” Yelchenko said. “This shouldn’t be complicated.”
As many in Kyiv are quick to remind anyone who tells them that something is impossible, Ukraine has been doing the impossible at war for four years now.
