Russia and the United Nations

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 21st of December 1991, eleven nations signed a declaration that handed Russia one of the most consequential seats in global politics. With the Soviet Union collapsing around them, the members of the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States agreed that Russia should inherit the USSR's permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council. No vote was held at the UN. No formal admission process was triggered. A letter from Boris Yeltsin to Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was circulated, no one objected, and at the Security Council meeting on the 31st of January 1992, Yeltsin himself sat down in the seat. How does a permanent seat at the world's most powerful table transfer from one state to another? Is the Russian Federation truly the legal successor to the Soviet Union, or did it simply step into a vacancy that the international community chose not to contest? And what does that ambiguity mean for the UN today?

• 2. From Petrograd to Permanent Seat

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  The Soviet Union was one of the original co-founders of the United Nations in 1945. Chapter V, Article 23 of the UN Charter names the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics explicitly as one of five permanent members of the Security Council, alongside China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. When the USSR dissolved in late 1991, Russia's claim to that seat rested on a set of practical realities. Russia accounted for more than 75% of the Soviet economy, the majority of the Soviet population, and 75% of its land mass. Beyond those figures, the Soviet state itself had its origins in Russia, with the October Revolution of 1917 taking place in Petrograd. Ambassador Y. Vorontsov delivered Yeltsin's letter to the Secretary-General one day before President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, requesting that the name 'Russian Federation' replace 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' in all UN organs. The Russian Federation, Yeltsin's letter stated, would maintain full responsibility for all rights and obligations of the USSR under the UN Charter, including financial ones.

• 3. The Legality Question

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  International lawyer Yehuda Zvi Blum questioned whether the transition was lawful. His argument was straightforward: with the Soviet Union terminated as a legal entity, its UN membership should have automatically lapsed, and Russia should have applied for admission just as the other newly independent republics did, with the exception of Belarus and Ukraine, which already held their own UN seats. Blum drew a distinction between situations where a state changes its name or its system of government and what happened in 1991. Zaire's renaming as the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not disrupt its UN seat. Egypt's shift from monarchy to republic did not either. But in those cases, the state itself continued to exist. The eleven Commonwealth members who supported Russia's claim simultaneously declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a legal entity. Those two positions are difficult to reconcile. One unnamed professor countered that Russia remained one of the largest states in the world geographically and demographically after the dissolution. That professor also pointed to a principle of historical continuity: Soviet Russia after 1917 and the Soviet Union after 1922 were treated internationally as continuing the same state that existed under the Russian Empire. The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, which might have clarified matters, was not a factor here; it did not enter into force until 1996, years after the transition had already been settled.

• 4. A Precedent Beyond Russia

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  Professor Andrew MacLeod of Kings College raised a question that extended the Russian case into British constitutional territory. He argued that the Russian precedent could apply to hypothetical independence scenarios in the United Kingdom. If Scotland, Northern Ireland, or both left the UK, he suggested, the Acts of Union and the Act of Settlement would be dissolved, leaving open the question of whether a reinstated Kingdom of England could claim continuity for UN and Security Council membership. Critics of that view pointed to the Treaty of Union of 1706, which has been incorporated into British law over centuries. Scottish independence, on that reading, would reduce the size of the United Kingdom rather than terminate it as a legal entity, much as Irish independence did in 1922. The Russian case did not resolve these questions for the UK; it only illustrated how contested the underlying principles remain.

• 5. Pressure for Reform

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  Mohamed Sid-Ahmed captured what many observers felt after 1991: one of the five powers holding veto rights in the Security Council had undergone a fundamental identity change. The Soviet Union had been a superpower leading the communist bloc. Russia was now a state aspiring to join the capitalist world. Russians abroad noted that Russia represented only about half the size of the former Soviet economy. That gap between inherited authority and actual standing fuelled a sharp rise in proposals for Security Council reform in the years following the breakup. In 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report 'In Larger Freedom' proposed finalizing arrangements to add more permanent seats as soon as possible. Campaigns to abolish the veto gained ground as well, though adoption remained unlikely because any such change would require the consent of the five permanent members themselves, including Russia. Russia's stated position, filed with the Global Policy Forum, was that the veto is necessary for 'balanced and sustainable decisions'.

• 6. Ukraine and the Reckoning

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  The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine brought the succession question back into sharp focus. Ukrainian ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya and members of the United States Congress called for Russia's suspension or expulsion from the UN and for stripping its veto power, citing violations of Article 6 of the Charter. Removing Russia from the permanent membership would require an amendment to Article 23, the same article that originally named the Soviet Union as a founding permanent member. The legality of such a move has been disputed. The UN General Assembly convened the eleventh emergency special session on the 2nd of March 2022, passing a resolution that condemned the invasion, demanded a full withdrawal of Russian forces, and demanded reversal of Russia's recognition of the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The resolution was sponsored by 96 countries and passed with 141 votes in favour, 5 against, and 35 abstentions. The tenth paragraph of that resolution also confirmed Belarus's involvement in what it called the unlawful use of force against Ukraine. The debate over whether the 1945 system of five permanent members remains suited to the present world has not been resolved, and Russia's seat at the Security Council sits at the center of it.