Can Russia Be Expelled from the UN? — An Essay by Sofiia Avdiuk
This question seems provocative only to those accustomed to viewing international institutions as unchanging stage scenery rather than living legal constructs subject to the same principles of logic and justice that underpin any legal system. In matters of this magnitude, nothing is impossible — there is only a lack of will and a lack of arguments. Diplomats will have to address the first; the second is what I will try to work through here.
Author: Sofiia Avdiuk, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Educational and Research Institute of Law
Who Voted for Russia’s Admission?
April 2022, the United Nations Security Council chamber. Ukraine’s Permanent Representative Serhii Kyslytsya stops mid-speech and turns to the delegates with a simple question: “I want to ask the delegates whose countries voted for the admission of the Russian Federation to the UN: please, raise your hand.” He slowly put on his glasses, just as slowly swept his gaze across the entire hall — not a single hand raised. He took off his glasses. A pause. “I will leave you with that.”
This scene is not a rhetorical gesture but a precise legal diagnosis. Article 23(1) of the current UN Charter names the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” among the permanent members of the Security Council, while the Russian Federation is not mentioned in the text at all — and this is not a formal detail but the foundation upon which the entire construction of Russia’s legitimacy in the Organization is cracking.
What happened in December 1991 is worth reconstructing in detail, because this is precisely where the key to all subsequent argumentation lies. On December 24, Ambassador Vorontsov closed the Security Council session as the representative of the Soviet Union, and the next session was opened by him already as the representative of the Russian Federation — between the two sessions lay only a letter from Boris Yeltsin to the Secretary-General, in which the President of Russia simply notified the UN of his decision. He did not submit a request, did not initiate a procedure, did not call for a vote. The General Assembly did not vote. The Security Council did not vote. No one voted.
Article 4 of the Charter stipulates that only a “peace-loving state” that undertakes to fulfill the obligations of the Charter may become a UN member, and such membership requires a recommendation from the Security Council and approval by two thirds of the General Assembly. Russia went through none of these steps, becoming, in Kyslytsya’s precise formulation, “the only state in the world that bypassed this procedure.”
Moscow has always relied on the “continuator state” theory, claiming that Russia is not a new state but simply the USSR under a different name — yet this argument collapses under the weight of its own contradiction. It was Russia itself that in December 1991 signed the Alma-Ata Declaration, which explicitly recorded that the USSR had ceased to exist as a subject of international law, and therefore a state that acknowledged the death of its predecessor cannot simultaneously claim to be its bodily continuation. Successor states — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the countries of the former Yugoslavia — all reapplied for membership anew. Russia decided it did not need to do so, and for thirty years the world silently agreed.
Is It Really a Dead End?
A skeptic at this point usually points to Article 6 and declares a dead end: expulsion requires a recommendation from the Security Council, while Russia will veto any such recommendation. But this dead end is illusory, because it arises from ignoring one key word. Article 6 speaks of a “recommendation,” not a “decision,” not an “order,” and not a “permit” — a recommendation by its legal nature is an advisory step, and nowhere in the Charter is it explicitly written that the General Assembly is deprived of the right to act in its absence.
This argument is reinforced by a precedent dating to 1950: when the USSR blocked the reappointment of Secretary-General Trygve Lie in the Security Council, the General Assembly voted to extend his mandate independently — without any recommendation from the Council, simply ignoring the blockage. Article 97 of the Charter contains an identical formula about appointment “upon the recommendation of the Security Council,” and if bypassing that provision was considered permissible then, legal logic suggests that in the case of an even more obvious abuse of power, the Assembly’s right to act is at least equally strong.
There is also a doctrinal argument that I consider conceptually the most persuasive: the prohibition of absurd results in the interpretation of international treaties. The UN Charter was created to protect against wars of aggression, and therefore an interpretation that allows an aggressor state to veto its own expulsion and turn the Organization into an instrument of its own cover contradicts not a particular norm but the very purpose of the treaty — and such interpretations are impermissible in international law.
The Credentials Mechanism and the 1974 Precedent
If expulsion through Article 6 seems too revolutionary a step for the current diplomatic climate, there is another path — more pragmatic, legally refined, and elegant in its simplicity. This is the credentials rejection mechanism, which the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly require to be submitted at the beginning of each session for each delegation — a document that at first glance appears to be a purely technical formality, but which has already once served as a weapon against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
On November 12, 1974, President of the General Assembly Abdelaziz Bouteflika declared that the systematic refusal to accept the credentials of the South African delegation was tantamount to prohibiting it from participating in the work of the Assembly, after which the GA supported this decision by an overwhelming majority — 91 “for,” 22 “against” — without any amendment to the Charter and without any recommendation from the Security Council. If the internal, albeit horrifying, policy of apartheid served as sufficient grounds for this step, then open armed aggression against a sovereign member state of that same Organization is a fundamentally weightier ground — and this difference is significant, because between internal tyranny and external attack lies the key boundary in the architecture of international law. Ukraine and its allies have a real majority in the General Assembly to activate this mechanism, and the only thing they lack is resolve.
Even without going beyond the regular sessions of the Security Council, there are two instruments that allow the destructive effect of the Russian veto to be limited immediately. Article 27(3) of the Charter obliges a party to a dispute to abstain from voting when considering matters under Chapter VI, and if Ukraine’s allies deliberately frame resolutions concerning Russia’s actions in precisely this legal context, the President will have the procedural right to declare that Russia is a party to the dispute and is obliged to abstain — and a challenge to this ruling is a procedural vote where the veto does not apply. Alongside this stands the doctrine of the prohibition of abuse of rights: the veto was granted to maintain peace, not to shield aggression, and when a state in violation of jus cogens norms uses it to block a response to its own crimes, such a vote is not an exercise of a right but its perversion, which opens grounds for recognizing the relevant votes as legally void.
Finally, the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism — Resolution 377(V) of 1950 — allows the General Assembly to convene automatically whenever the Security Council is paralyzed by a veto, and it is already being applied: it was on this basis that the Eleventh Emergency Special Session was convened in February 2022, where 141 states voted to condemn the aggression. This majority is real — and it is a potential that is far from exhausted.
Conclusion: A Lack of Persistence, Not of Arguments
Russia did not come to the UN through a vote — it came through an amorphous letter and a silent consent that conveniently suited everyone for thirty years. The Charter it relies upon to protect its veto never formally recognized its membership. The expulsion provision of Article 6 is not as insurmountable as it seems, because the 1950 precedent demonstrates this. The credentials mechanism already produced a result in 1974, and nothing prevents it from doing so again.
Behind every “impossible” in international law lies in fact “no one tried hard enough” — and this persistence is the only deficit that is lacking today. Kyslytsya asked in that hall: did anyone vote for Russia’s admission? No one raised a hand. It is time to ask the next question — and who is prepared to vote for it to finally go through this process officially, or to leave?
References
1. Charter of the United Nations, 1945 // United Nations. URL: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
2. Kyslytsya S. Address at the UN Security Council Session, February 28, 2022 // LB.ua. URL: https://lb.ua/world/2022/02/28/507381_kislitsya_radbezi_oon_chas_dopomogti.html
3. Kyslytsya S. Address at the UN Security Council Session on Events in Bucha, April 2022 // StopCor. URL: https://www.stopcor.org/ukr/section-zarubezhom/news-chi-golosuvav-tut-htos-za-vstup-rosii
4. Maurer D. A U.N. Security Council Permanent Member’s De Facto Immunity under Article 6 // Lawfare Media. URL: https://www.lawfaremedia.org
As we previously reported, the All-Ukrainian academic essay competition under the #UnRussiaUN initiative was held by the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation together with Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
