Kharchenko Kyrylo Vitaliyovych, National University “Odesa Law Academy,” Faculty of Judicial and International Law

As of 2026, the international community finds itself in a situation that the founders of the United Nations in 1945 would have preferred to consider impossible. The organization created “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” has become a platform where the aggressor is not merely present but dictates terms through the right of veto.

Dmytro Fialkovskyi
Educational and Research Institute of International Relations
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine has sharpened the debate not only about the responsibility of the aggressor state, but also about the effectiveness of global governance institutions themselves. Calls for Russia’s expulsion from the UN as a form of institutional sanction are heard with increasing frequency in the public sphere. Yet such demands often ignore the fundamental legal constraints built into the very architecture of the organization. Formally expelling Russia is practically unfeasible; the most promising avenue is challenging the legitimacy of its status as the successor state of the USSR in the Security Council.

The question of whether Russia can be expelled from the United Nations following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine has long outgrown the status of a political slogan. It concerns not only the punishment of an aggressor state, but also the credibility of the entire international security system. If a state violates the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, occupies the territory of another state, and simultaneously remains a permanent member of the Security Council, a question arises: has the UN itself become hostage to its own architecture? In my view, expelling Russia from the UN through a single formal decision is nearly impossible — yet it is possible to gradually challenge the legitimacy of its privileged status within the Organization.

Author: Anastasia Opanasenko, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Prepared by: Myroslav Andriiovych Mykhalchyn, fourth-year student of the Faculty of Law at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”

“The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save it from hell”
— Dag Hammarskjöld

The modern architecture of collective security, established in the aftermath of World War II, is currently undergoing profound destabilization. Russia’s full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine has catalyzed an existential crisis within the United Nations, exposing the functional incapacity of the Security Council (SC) in the domain of international peace maintenance. The situation in which a permanent SC member acts as the direct perpetrator of aggression while wielding the veto to block resolutions aimed at restoring another state’s sovereignty reflects a critical erosion of the Organization’s legal norms.