Can Russia Be Expelled from the UN? — Essay by Kyrylo Kharchenko

The question of expelling the Russian Federation from the UN is frequently raised in political circles and at youth competitions, particularly on Ukrainian territory. Yet for a discerning analyst, the very framing of this question appears paradoxical — and at times absurd. We are dealing with a fundamental systemic flaw: the architecture of the UN is built in such a way that it shields its own “architects” (the permanent members of the Security Council) from any accountability, regardless of the gravity of their crimes. Today’s reality compels us to acknowledge: it may be simpler to tear the system down entirely and build it anew than to attempt reform under existing rules.

The Legal Deadlock: A Veto Over One’s Own Arrest

One of the principal arguments advanced by skeptics regarding Russia’s expulsion rests on Articles 5 and 6 of the UN Charter. Under those provisions, the decision to suspend a member’s rights or expel it entirely is taken by the General Assembly, but exclusively upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

This is where we encounter a legal deadlock. The Russian Federation is a permanent member of the Security Council. One might imagine a trial in which the defendant holds the right to veto the warrant for their own arrest. Although certain interpretations of the Charter suggest that a member should not vote on its own case, in practice the Security Council has no mechanism to strip the Russian Federation of its veto. This is precisely what we observe at the UN. Any resolution touching on the status of the Russian Federation will be instantly blocked by the Russian Federation itself.

I consider this formulation to be fundamentally defective if we regard the UN as a body of justice. But the UN was not created as a world court — it was created as a “concert of great powers,” whose primary purpose was to prevent a nuclear war among the victors of the Second World War. In 2026, that foundation has rotted: the victor-state has itself become the principal source of global instability, yet the procedural safeguards created eighty years ago continue to protect it.

There is also Article 109 of the UN Charter, which provides for the convening of a General Conference to review the Charter upon a decision of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and nine of the eleven members of the Security Council (without a veto on the convening itself, but with a veto on the resulting amendments). Formally, this permits the system to be broken open: were the permanent members to agree to a review of the rules of the game, it would be possible to create a mechanism for revoking permanent member status or stripping veto rights for gross violations. In practice, however, this path is political fantasy. No nuclear-armed state will ever consent to a Charter revision that could weaken its own privileges. Therefore, when we speak of “tearing the system down entirely,” we mean not a legitimate revision but the radical creation of a new security architecture outside the UN framework.

Geopolitical Barriers: China, the United States, and the Global South

Even if it were possible to circumvent the veto through questionable legal maneuvers, hard geopolitics stands in the way.

First, there is the Chinese shield. Beijing views the UN as an instrument of a multipolar world in which it can restrain Western influence. For China, the expulsion of any permanent member of the Security Council is a “red line.” If Russia can be expelled today for violating international law, the West may tomorrow attempt the same with China over Taiwan or human rights. Beijing will never vote to establish such a precedent, as it would undermine the inviolability of the “club of five.”

Second, there is American pragmatism and the Trump factor in the coming years. In 2026, US foreign policy is increasingly tilting toward realism and isolationism. The return to power of right-wing conservative politicians — such as Donald Trump or his successors — radically alters Washington’s attitude toward the UN. For them, the UN is an “ineffective talking shop.”

Rather than pressing for Russia’s expulsion, such leaders may simply ignore the institution. Moreover, it is important for Washington to preserve a venue for direct communication with nuclear-armed states. Paradoxically, the US administration may have no interest in expelling the Russian Federation, because doing so would definitively destroy the channels of diplomatic pressure and render Russia a “pariah state” armed with nuclear weapons and with nothing left to lose.

Beyond the positions of Beijing and Washington, in my view there exists another critical player that makes the expulsion of the Russian Federation practically impossible — India and the countries of the “Global South.”

For India, the UN in its current form is a club to which they themselves aspire to belong as a permanent member. Any attempt to change the rules of the game “on the fly” or to expel one of the participants is perceived by them as a threat to the stability of the entire system. If the West can expel Russia today, it may tomorrow dictate terms to any other state that does not fit the “liberal order.” For India, South Africa, Brazil, or another skeptical country with its own interests, Russia in the Security Council is not an “aggressor” but a necessary counterweight to US dominance. They prefer a paralyzed yet familiar UN to an unpredictable world in which rules are set by a select group of countries “on the fly.”

Ukraine’s Legal Argument: Illegitimate Membership

Since the path through expulsion (Article 6) is blocked, Ukrainian diplomacy proposes a considerably more nuanced approach: to demonstrate that Russia never acquired UN membership through lawful means.

In 1991, following the dissolution of the USSR, Russia simply occupied the seat of the Soviet Union. The UN Charter still identifies the permanent Security Council member as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Unlike the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia underwent the membership procedure anew, the Russian Federation simply relabeled the nameplate on the table.

Ukraine’s legal logic is straightforward: if the Russian Federation did not undergo the admission procedure, its presence in the UN is a historical misunderstanding. Yet over thirty-five years, tacit acquiescence has transformed into an international custom recognized by the International Court of Justice in cases concerning state succession. To declare the Russian Federation illegitimate would be to declare illegitimate the thousands of UN decisions taken over the past decades. The world fears this chaos, and so legal truth is shattered against the wall of political expediency.

The UN as Placebo: Functional Death or the Nature of the System?

Returning to the UN, I have a radical question: if the organization is incapable of expelling an aggressor who directly violates its Charter, is such an organization needed at all?

Looking back at history, the League of Nations — the UN’s predecessor — was an equally ineffective structure. When the world began to unravel in the 1930s, the League of Nations failed to stop a single major aggressor: not Japan in Manchuria, not Italy in Ethiopia, not Germany during the remilitarization of the Rhineland.

When the USSR was expelled from the League in 1939 for the attack on Finland, it was not an act of strength. One might say it was the death rattle of the organization. The expulsion of the USSR did nothing to help Finland and did not prevent the Second World War. On the contrary, it merely underscored that the League of Nations no longer had any levers of influence over reality.

Today the UN finds itself at that same juncture. The organization is incapable of adopting any effective decision regarding Ukraine because of the Russian Federation’s veto, regarding Gaza because of the position of other members, regarding Taiwan because of China’s threats. In my view, this is not merely a “crisis” — it is functional death. If the organization is incapable of performing its primary function — maintaining peace — it becomes an expensive decoration, maintained only because world leaders are afraid to acknowledge: the old world has died, and the new one has not yet been born.

I hold a different view, however, which I consider more realistic: the UN was never created to stop wars. It was created so that great powers could wage war without destroying the planet in the process.

The ordinary individual has grown accustomed to thinking of the UN as a kind of global regulator. In my view, it is a platform for legitimizing spheres of influence. Russia’s presence in the Security Council is not a flaw in the system — it is the system’s very essence. The UN functions as a “safety valve”: as long as the Russian Federation sits in the Security Council, there exists an illusion of a diplomatic process. Expel it, and the world officially acknowledges a state of global anarchy.

I believe the UN is a placebo. It gives us the reassuring sense that “someone up there is managing order,” so that we do not go mad from the awareness of a simple fact: we live in an era in which the enforcement of norms of international law has proven incapable of restraining a nuclear aggressor — which creates the illusion of lawlessness. To expel Russia means to shatter that mirror and behold chaos. Most countries of the world are simply too frightened to do so.

Conclusion: A Piece of Paper Instead of Law

Can Russia be expelled from the UN in 2026? Legally — no. Geopolitically — also unlikely, as long as China and domestic processes in the United States block any radical changes.

But the very posing of this question speaks to a profound crisis. If Russia cannot be expelled owing to the deficiencies of the Charter, then that Charter is no longer operative law — it is merely a piece of paper. Ukraine in international relations today plays the role of “the boy who cries that the emperor has no clothes.” We point to the fact that the security system is a fiction.

In my subjective view, seeking a solution within the existing Charter is legal idealism that ignores the fundamental paralysis of international institutions. I want to say that the future of international security will be built not in conference halls on Manhattan, but on the battlefield and in new alliances, where the word “security” carries greater weight than the procedural veto right of an aggressor. The UN in its current form will either reform under extraordinary pressure or simply fade away, remaining in history textbooks as yet another failed experiment of humanity — as we previously wrote, the question of expelling Russia from the UN has been explored by other participants of the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation’s #UnRussiaUN student essay competition.