Russia does not deserve a privileged place on the United Nations Security Council, according to President Joe Biden’s top envoy to the United Nations.
“Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told AFP. “It shouldn't be, because of what it is doing in Ukraine, but the [U.N.] charter does not allow for a change in its permanent membership.”
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That comment offers a preview of the acrimony that will be on display over the next month as Russia takes its turn as the chair of the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council. Yet Russian officials have scoffed at the idea of their removal from the premier entity in international diplomacy, pointing to the legal impediments that Thomas-Greenfield acknowledged.
“Russia's exclusion from the U.N. Security Council is impossible without changes to the U.N. Charter, just as it is impossible to deprive Russia of the right to chair the council,” Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, the lead Russian envoy in New York, told a state media outlet. “This is simply absurd.”
Still, Russian and Western officials have taken the war in Ukraine as a referendum on the viability of the extant international order. Russia tries to argue that the invasion of Ukraine represents an attempt to uphold its proper place in the world system, while a growing chorus of independent U.N. officials accuse Russia of rampant war crimes.
“Severe violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have become shockingly routine,” said Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, during a Thursday address in Geneva. “Our staff have verified more than 8,400 civilian deaths, and over 14,000 civilians wounded, since Feb. 24, 2022. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the casualties resulted from the Russian forces' use of wide-impact explosive weaponry in residential neighborhoods.”
Turk said that his team verified "various forms of sexual violence” by Russian forces throughout the invasion.
“Of the 109 cases of sexual violence by Russian personnel that were documented, most took place in places of detention,” he said. “Others, including rape, were perpetrated in areas controlled by Russian forces, mostly against women. Three rape victims were girls under the age of 18.”
The U.N. investigators also “registered 24 cases of sexual violence by Ukrainian personnel,” he added, noting that “most of these consisted of threats of sexual violence during initial stages of detention, as well as forced public stripping.”
Turk’s allegations add to a litany of denunciations from international investigators. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another senior Russian official on the grounds that the Kremlin has orchestrated a forced deportation policy targeting Ukrainian children. Russia maintains that the cases involved “evacuation from the war zone in full compliance with the obligations under International Humanitarian Law,” as Nebenzya put it, but U.N. investigators faulted Russia for refusing to allow the children to be evacuated to Ukrainian territory.
“It also does not appear that Russian authorities sought to establish contact with the children’s relatives or with Ukrainian authorities,” the Human Rights Council’s commission of independent investigators found.
Ukrainian officials have attempted to call into question Russia’s status as a veto-wielding member of the council on the theory that the Russian government should not have been entitled to inherit the prerogatives of the Soviet Union.
“In 1991, Russia usurped the USSR’s seat of the permanent Security Council member and turned it … into its Throne of Impunity,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the U.N. Security Council on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “The future of Russia in the United Nations should be determined in the context of the illegitimate change of plates from USSR to Russia in 1991 and responsibility for crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”
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That proposal has gained little traction due to the legal reasons that Thomas-Greenfield mentioned, but the war crimes allegations are sure to be a mainstay of U.S.-Russia disputes at the U.N.
"At every opportunity, we will raise our concerns about Russia's actions,” Thomas-Greenfield said.