As Moscow continued its invasion of Ukraine on Friday, voices are increasingly heard calling for the outright expulsion of Russia from the United Nations (UN). Its declaration of war, “unprovoked and unjustifiable” for Westerners, violates the charter of the international body.
This radical sanction was already applied in 1939 against the former USSR at the time of the League of Nations, but it is now easier to claim than to apply.
“With Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin must now be taken seriously in his approach,” said political scientist Lubomyr Luciuk, a Ukraine specialist at the Royal Military College of Canada, in an interview. We have to keep in mind that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and continues to attack it here to cut to pieces a country that has no choice but to defend itself. The West must oppose a strong response which should include the expulsion of the Russian Federation from the United Nations while deploying Western troops and their air power in Ukraine to defend a sovereign state against unprovoked and blatant Russian aggression. “.
In 1939, the attempted dismemberment of Poland and the invasion of Finland orchestrated by the government of Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s predecessor, had earned the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations (SDN), ancestor of ONU.
“That’s what should be done today,” also believes Quebec historian of Ukrainian origin Roman Serbyn, professor emeritus at UQAM.
The problem is that the UN Charter does not provide for such a measure, including when one of its members starts a war in defiance of the rules of international law, as Russia has just done. Only a loss of voting rights in the General Assembly is provided for in the statutes of the international organization, only in the event that a State is indebted to it, and this, according to a certain threshold of indebtedness calculated according to its annual contribution.
Ironically, it is Russia, through its ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, which currently chairs the UN Security Council for the whole month of February.
Russia, which also vetoed on Friday, as expected, during a vote in the UN Security Council, a resolution co-written by the United States and Albania deploring in “the strongest terms” its “aggression against Ukraine” and calling on it to “immediately” withdraw its troops from that country.
Of the 15 members of the Council, 11 countries voted in favor of the text, 3 abstained: China, India and the United Arab Emirates. The project had been softened in the hours preceding the ballot to “secure” abstentions and prevent these three countries from voting no, according to a diplomat. The proposed text thus no longer included the term “condemn”, replaced by “deplore”. A reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which provides for the possible use of force, was also deleted. The text must be submitted in the coming days to the United Nations General Assembly, which brings together the 193 member countries of the Organization. But unlike the resolutions adopted in the Security Council, those of the Assembly are not binding.
“It would be a mistake to expel Russia from the UN, believes for his part the former Canadian ambassador to Ukraine, G. Daniel Caron, joined this week by The duty. Even if he is not a good partner, who does not respect international law, we need to talk to him and a table to do so. And the UN is there for that. »
In 2014, when Crimea was annexed, a similar scenario occurred. Russia had vetoed a draft resolution condemning it. The text had then collected at the General Assembly 100 votes in favor out of 193 Member States, that is to say a small majority.
Remember that in 77 years of existence, the UN has not been able to avoid the outbreak of a war orchestrated by one of its five permanent members, all of whom have the right of veto. This was the case for the United States against Iraq in 2003 and for Russia against Ukraine in 2022.
On Thursday, the organization’s secretary-general, António Guterres, maintained that the invasion of Ukraine “is a mistake, against the Charter” of the United Nations, that it “is inadmissible, but it is not irreversible “, while calling on President Putin to “stop the military operation” and “bring back [ses] troops in Russia.
Failing to punish the aggressor, the UN immediately released 20 million dollars for emergency humanitarian aid intended for Ukraine and neighboring countries.
With Agence France-Presse