The USA, Japan and EU countries called for the reform of the UN Security Council

Representatives of the USA, Great Britain, Japan and several European Union countries called for reform of the UN Security Council. This happened on Monday at the meeting of the Security Council in New York. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acted as chairman.

Opening the meeting, Lavrov said that peace, as in the Cold War, was approaching a dangerous end. In his speech, the minister noted that the UN has too many representatives of Western countries and too few representatives from other regions. According to Lavrov, this undermines the principle of multilateralism in international relations.

Lavrov assigned responsibility for the Russian attack on Ukraine to the USA and its allies. The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again stated that the purpose of Russian troops is to “protect people from extermination by the Kyiv regime, to eliminate security threats from NATO.”

Lavrov reminded that the Russian journalists who were supposed to fly to the UN Security Council meeting were unable to do so. According to the minister, the US embassy announced its readiness to issue visas to media representatives already after the plane with the delegation took off.

The representative of the USA in the Security Council, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that Russia, which this month presides over the UN, grossly violates the principles of the organization’s charter, started a war of aggression, inhibited the grain deal and withdrew from the treaty on START.

Thomas-Greenfield mentioned the arrest in Russia of American citizens – Paul Whelan and journalist Evan Hershkovich, convicted in the espionage case. The diplomat called for their immediate release.

The US representative believes that the UN has found itself in a crisis of confidence. “Aggression and territorial seizure are permissible from the point of view of international law,” she said.

Thomas-Greenfield called for UN reforms. The representatives of Great Britain and France agreed with it.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought unimaginable suffering to Ukrainians and became a disaster for Russia itself. The Russian generation has lost its future, and the government does not even explain why,” said British representative Barbara Woodward.

The representative of France, Nicolas de Riviere, reminded that Russia had previously violated the rule of international law. He gave the example of the invasion of Russian troops into Georgia in 2008, support for separatists in Donbas since 2014, and the violation of the arms embargo with Iran.

Riviere mentioned that France and Mexico came up with an initiative recommending permanent members of the Security Council to refrain from using the right of veto in cases where mass atrocities are concerned, and called on other countries to join it.

The representative of Japan, Ishikane Kimihiro, also accused Russia of using the right of veto to paralyze the decisions of the Security Council, and advocated reform.

The head of the EU delegation to the UN, Olaf Skoog, said: “Russia is trying to present itself as a defender of the UN Charter and multilateralism. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is cynical.”

China’s representative, Zhang Jun, did not approve of the reform of the Security Council. In his opinion, it is not necessary to reform the statute, but to “start with oneself.” “We are against some countries imposing their will on the international community,” he said, without specifying which countries he meant. He also called on the USA and other countries to abandon unilateral sanctions, calling them illegal.

• Russia will assume the formal role of the country-chairman of the UN Security Council in April. 15 countries – members of the Security Council – preside over it in turn, each for one month. Their rotation is carried out in alphabetical order. The last time Russia held the role of chairman of the Security Council was in February 2022.

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