On December, 2022 that Statement of the MFA of Ukraine on the illegitimacy of the Russia’s presence in the UN Security Council and in the United Nations as a whole was published. Statement stresses that from the point of view of international law, the issue of the status of a UN member state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which Russia enjoys, remains unsettled, and that Russia took over the seat of a permanent member of the UN Security Council bypassing the procedures defined by the UN Charter.
MFA of Ukraine points that the attempt of Russia to annex the AR of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Kherson regions of Ukraine as a result of the threat or the use of force, as well as the subsequent military control and temporary occupation of these territories by Russia, is a violation of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine, as well as of generally recognized principles and norms of international law; that the war of Russia against Ukraine is a violation of the goals and principles of the UN Charter unprecedented since its signing in 1945 and deprives Russia of the right to be called a peace-loving state.
Statement stresses that the Kremlin’s “official statements”, “justifying” its airstrikes and missile attacks, global energy blackmail and its “hunger games” by blocking the export of Ukrainian agricultural products, indicate that Russia’s actions do not only constitute genocide of the Ukrainian people, but also have become a direct threat to international peace and security. Inter alia, MFA of Ukraine stresses, Russia has been fomenting conflicts in Africa for decades. Its actions keep destabilizing Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic.
The root causes of all these crimes lie not only in the policy of the Russian Federation to incite conflicts, but also in its systematic blocking of decisions necessary for their resolution, points the Statement. MFA of Ukraine adds that the question of Russia’s fate in the United Nations should be resolved in the general context of its responsibility for gross violations of the norms and principles of international law as well as for crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine, in particular, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as the crime of genocide.
Ukraine called in Statement the UN member states to resume the application of the UN Charter in the context of the legitimacy of the Russia’s presence in the UN, to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to exclude it from the UN as a whole. Ukraine assumed in this document that the removal of Russia from the UN Security Council will not have retroactive effect on the previously adopted decisions of this organ and will not entail the annulment or revision of the resolutions of the Security Council adopted so far. We should remind that the legal aspects of the illegitimacy of Russia’s presence in the UN have been repeatedly investigated by experts of our Association.
