Russia refuses to be browbeaten at UN

The presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) rotates alphabetically among its 15 members, including the Permanent Five or P5 comprising the United States, United Kingdom. France, China and Russia. It is Russia’s turn to function as UNSC president this month, and this has raised eyebrows because Russia is directly involved in the war in Ukraine, and European Union (EU) countries, the US and the UK are vehemently opposed to it. But Russia is refusing to be browbeaten. Said Russia’s US envoy Vassily Nabenzia that his country has always been “an honest broker” in the past when it held the presidency of the council. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will preside over the UNSC meeting to discuss “effective multilateralism through the defence of the principles of the UN Charter.”

It is this that riles the Western countries because they think that Russia which has violated the UN Charter by invading Ukraine should not be sitting in on a meeting discussing the UN charter. Britain’s deputy ambassador to the UN James Kariuki said, “It (Russia) is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, violating the most basic principle of the UN Charter – you don’t redraw borders by force – and its president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the systematic abduction of Ukrainian children.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the Russian presidency of the council as “bankruptcy” and the Estonian ambassador Rein Tammsaar speaking on behalf of Latvia and Lithuania called the Russian presidency “shameful, humiliating and dangerous”.

The UNSC rule says that if a member-state is involved in an issue being debated, then that state should recuse itself from the debate, the Russian envoy said then US, Britain and France should withdraw from the discussion because these countries are directly supporting Ukraine. He also pointed out that after the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the US and Britain held the presidency of the council in consecutive months, and they did not withdraw when the war in Iraq was discussed. Nebenzia, the Russian envoy, said, “Nobody raised the question of their legitimacy to hold the presidency. And nobody put on the table the question that they withdraw from discussing an issue that was perhaps the most hot and topical then.” The Russian envoy had also announced that he would be holding an informal meeting of the council to dispel the Western misinformation of the war in Ukraine and to clear the air.

The clash between the West and Russia has been an old story in the history of the UN and the UNSC, going back to the old Cold War days. The new clash between the two comes at a time when Russia is not the superpower it was then, rivalling the US, especially in terms of the nuclear warheads that each side possessed. Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has been threatening the possibility of resorting to the nuclear option ever since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia is now a weaker country compared to the status of communist Russia as in the Soviet Union. The Western countries can vocal and aggressive against Russia, but the Russians enjoy support of China, and many countries outside Europe. Perhaps the more fruitful of confronting Russia on the Ukrainian issue is to let Russia explain what its stand is on the issue in clear language. Russia is not winning the war in Ukraine, and there has to be a negotiated settlement to end the war. There can be no better place than the UNSC for Russia to make clear its stand, and force it to accept that Ukraine is an independent state and a member of the UN, and that Ukraine’s sovereignty is at stake. It is necessary that this burning issue should be discussed frankly in the open in the UNSC rather through tacit and secret deals between the White House and Kremlin.