Ukraine urges the UN Security Council to exclude Russia

Ukraine announced an initiative on Monday, calling on the UN Security Council to exclude permanent membership of Russia over its months-long invasion.

“Ukraine calls on the UN member states to resume the implementation of the UN Charter within the framework of the legality of the presence of the Russian Federation in the UN, to deprive the Russian Federation of its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to exclude it from the UN as a whole,” reads a statement from the Foreign Ministry. Ukrainian.

The statement said that the issue of Russia’s membership status in the United Nations and its permanent membership in the UN Security Council is still “unresolved” from “the point of view of international law.”

“The Russian Federation seized a seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council bypassing the procedures established in the UN Charter. This happened on the basis of an ordinary letter from the President of the RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federative Republic) Boris Yeltsin, addressed to the UN Secretary General , which was sent on December 24, 31 years ago,” the statement reads.

The statement also referred to Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations, which states that “the admission of peace-loving countries to membership in the United Nations is affected by a decision of the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council, and only in this way.”

“The Russian Federation has never been subjected to the legal procedures for admission to membership, and thus illegally occupies the seat of the Soviet Union in the UN Security Council. From a legal and political point of view, there can be only one conclusion: Russia is usurping the seat of the Soviet Union in the Council,” the statement claimed. international security.

He also argued that Russia failed to meet key criteria for membership in the United Nations, citing the first paragraph of Article 4 of the UN Charter which noted that “Membership in the United Nations is open to all peace-loving nations”.

“The actions of the Russian Federation are contrary to the concept of a ‘peace-loving’ state. Three decades of its illegal presence in the United Nations have been marked by wars and seizures of the territories of other states, a forceful change of internationally recognized borders, and attempts to satisfy its invasive and neo-imperial ambitions.”

She also touched on Russia’s launch of its “special military operation” on February 24, adding that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, as well as the recent annexation of Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Kherson regions, is a “violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence”.

“We believe that, guided by the principle of equality of the members of the United Nations, the Russian Federation should follow the same international legal path to admission to membership in the Organization as other countries have done. … The return of the Russian Federation to the United Nations in the future can only be considered if it corresponds to UN membership criteria.

It added that Russia should be admitted to the United Nations only after it “fulfills the conditions for membership in the organization” and “on the recommendation of the United Nations Security Council, as provided for in Article 4, paragraph 2, of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Last Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Kyiv was preparing to take formal steps to prove that Russia’s presence in the UN Security Council is “illegal” and to remove it from the council.

On December 14, two US lawmakers introduced a resolution to remove Russia from the United Nations Security Council, saying that Russia’s presence there “violates the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”