Tag: Student Essay Contest 2026

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.

Yevhen Kostohryzov, a student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA), examined the legal and political mechanisms that could lead to restricting or stripping Russia of its UN membership and its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council. The essay was submitted to the #UnRussiaUN competition organized by the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation.

In February 2022, when the UN Security Council convened an emergency session following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no one truly expected a different outcome. Russia said “no” — and blocked any resolution. One vote. One permanent member. And the complete helplessness of an organization founded precisely to prevent such things from ever happening again. That moment was not merely a symbol of a particular diplomatic failure — it exposed a structural pathology embedded since 1945: the international collective security system proved architecturally incapable of responding to aggression by one of its own founders. The question “can Russia be expelled from the UN?” is therefore not simply a legal puzzle, but a question about the limits of international law, about the logic of realpolitik, and ultimately about what strategy Ukraine should pursue in a world where the rules were not written for it.