Sergey Lavrov at “The Global Affairs magazine”: «The UN must recover its central role in coordinating actions by nations»

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s article for Russia in Global Affairs magazine «The UN must recover its central role in coordinating actions by nations», October 4, 2024.

The 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly has recently completed the general debate, where President of Russia Vladimir Putin tasked me to represent the Russian Federation.

Does the Pact for the Future have a future?

Held as usual in the last week of September, the UN’s high-level week included the so-called Summit of the Future. The idea to convene it came from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Russia has met this idea with understanding considering that the UN is sinking deeper and deeper into a crisis, and something has to be done about it. Russian diplomats joined efforts to prepare this meeting and acted in a sincere and honest way, even if we did not have any illusions in this regard. In fact, there were quite a few major UN events in the past which failed to go beyond bombastic declarations that were forgotten soon after their adoption.

Let us recall the Millennium Summit in 2000, which proclaimed the goal to “free the peoples from the scourge of war.” Just over two years later, the United States, at the head of the coalition of the willing, invaded Iraq – the country which has yet to overcome the devastating consequences of this reckless undertaking – under a ridiculous pretext and without the mandate of the UN Security Council.

The 2005 World Summit proclaimed its commitment to establishing a just peace in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. But this sacred would-be commitment did not prevent Washington and its allies from emboldening Georgia’s then-leader Mikheil Saakashvili to launch an armed aggression against the people of South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in 2008. Three years later, NATO orchestrated a military intervention in Libya that destroyed its statehood and undermined the stability of neighbouring countries and the Middle East in general.

In 2015, the UN Summit on Sustainable Development adopted grand plans to fight poverty and inequality. In the end, they turned out to be empty promises in the face of the unwillingness of the Western countries to give up their neo-colonial practices of siphoning off the riches of the world for their own benefit. You can simply look at the statistics to see how many promises to fund development in the Global South and transfer environmentally friendly technologies have been honoured.

The current UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, just like Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon before him, has put forward an initiative under the slogan of giving a new start and resetting global cooperation. This is a wonderful idea. Who could disagree? But what global cooperation is there to talk about, when the West has trampled all those unshakeable values of globalisation we have been hearing about from everywhere for so many years. These perorations were designed to convince us that they would give everyone equal access to the goods of modern civilisation. Where is the inviolability of property, the presumption of innocence, freedom of expression, access to information, fair market competition under fair and constant rules?

How can we discuss global cooperation when the Western countries have unleashed a real war of sanctions against more than half, if not the majority, of the countries of the world, and the US dollar, promoted as an asset and a good for all humanity, has been crudely turned into a weapon?

The trade blockade of Cuba has been in place for over 60 years, even though the overwhelming majority of countries have been working to lift it. In the pursuit of the ephemeral goal of preserving its domination, Washington is blocking the WTO’s logical efforts to resolve disputes and reform the Bretton Woods institutions, the structure of which no longer reflects the real balance of forces in the global economy and finance. The West’s actions in this sphere show that the United States and its satellites simply fear honest competition.

It has gotten to the point where the West wants to turn the UN into an instrument for attaining itself-seeking goals. The Summit of the Future has shown that more and more attempts are being taken to erode the intergovernmental foundations of the UN. They are hindering the badly needed change in the system of forming the UN Secretariat, where the key posts have been seized and are “inherited” by representatives of the Western minority. Since even the UN Secretary-General started talking about resetting global cooperation, the UN Secretariat should advocate unifying ideas and compromises rather than invent justifications for introducing pro-Western narratives into the UN’s operations.

It is not too late to give the UN a new lease on life. But this should not be done through delusional summits and declarations but through the restoration of trust based on the Charter principle of the sovereign equality of all states. This is not happening so far. Trust is being undermined, in particular, by the West’s efforts to create restricted and controllable bodies, in circumvention of the UN, for addressing serious and even fateful issues. They include internet governance and a legal framework for AI-assisted technology. These issues can have a profound impact on humankind’s future and should therefore be addressed on a universal basis without any discrimination or striving for unilateral advantages.

This means that there must be an honest discussion by all UN member states, and not a process in which the Pact for the Future was prepared – without a single plenary session of talks attended by all countries and under strict control by the Western masterminds. As a result, the newly-baked pact has joined the necropolis of beautifully worded English-language declarations. Sad though it may be, this is the fate of all “products” of such global summits.

Peace and security

The situation is no better when it comes to fulfilling obligations under UN Security Council resolutions, which, according to the UN Charter, are binding upon member states. We have all seen the Kosovo settlement decisions and the Dayton Accords on Bosnia and Herzegovina sabotaged. The most egregious example is the consensual resolutions on the establishment of an independent Palestinian State living side by side with Israel in peace and security, which have been brushed aside for almost 80 years.

There is no justification for the acts of terrorism that occurred on October 7, 2023 and targeted Israelis. However, everyone who still has a sense of compassion is predictably outraged by this tragedy being used as a reason for the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, which has spiralled into an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. The killing of civilians using American weapons must be stopped immediately. Humanitarian supplies must be delivered to Gaza unimpeded, and local infrastructure must be restored. Most importantly, Palestinians must be guaranteed their legitimate right to self-determination and allowed – not in words, but in deeds, on the ground – to build a territorially contiguous and viable state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Another outrageous example of terrorist methods used to achieve political goals is the inhumane attack on Lebanon, where civilian equipment was turned into a deadly weapon. This crime must be investigated immediately. But even now, we cannot overlook the numerous media stories, including in the European and US media, which indicate Washington’s involvement or at least awareness of that terrorist attack being premeditated.

We know that the Americans always deny involvement and will do everything they can to hush up this evidence, too. In fact, this is what they did in response to irrefutable evidence of their complicity in the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Incidentally, those pipelines were a perfect symbol of the “global cooperation” that the UN Secretary-General dreams of. The loss of that infrastructure has undermined the EU’s global competitiveness for years, to the benefit of the United States. The West is also responsible for concealing the truth about the persons behind many other heinous crimes, including the brutal provocation in the Kiev suburb of Bucha in April 2022 and a series of poisonings of Russian citizens in Britain and Germany.

The UN Secretariat cannot remain aloof from efforts to establish the truth in situations that directly affect global security and must strictly abide by Article 100 of the UN Charter, acting impartially and avoiding the temptation to play into the hands of certain states, especially those who instead of calling for cooperation openly describe the world using the garden vs. jungle metaphor, or compare the world to a democratic table set for dinner and those on the menu.

We must recall the track record of those who demand that the rest of the world play by their rules. The invasion of Afghanistan and the inglorious twenty-year presence of a well-known coalition there was accompanied by the emergence of al-Qaeda. The creation of ISIS directly resulted from the aggression against Iraq. The start of the war in Syria gave birth to Jabhat al-Nusra (now called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham). Today, the Western coalition continues with its strikes against Syrian territory, which de facto serves as a source of inspiration for the Kiev regime to carry out similar terrorist attacks against Russian regions by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. By the way, the West has openly backed these efforts. Even in Syria, the Vladimir Zelensky regime has been working with the United States to train Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorists to master the latest UAV manufacturing technology in order to fight the Russian Armed Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic.

The West destroyed Libya, which opened the floodgates for terrorism in the Sahara-Sahel region and sent millions of illegal immigrants to Europe. We urge all those who care about the future of their countries and people to be extremely cautious about the new reckless undertakings by the inventors of these very rules.

Political assassinations, like the ones that took place on July 31 in Tehran and on September 27 in Beirut, are a matter of grave concern for us. When Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon in the early hours of October 1, the United States administration did not condemn in any way this act of aggression against a sovereign state. Therefore, Washington de factor encouraged its Middle Eastern ally to expand the combat zone.

The tragic and unacceptable developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict, in Lebanon, in Yemen, in the waters of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in Sudan and in other hotspots in Africa reflect an undeniable fact: security can either be equal and indivisible for all, or there will be no security for anyone.

For years, Russia has been trying to make Washington, London and Brussels, overwhelmed by their own complexes of exceptionalism and impunity, understand this seemingly simple truth in the context of European security. Although the Western countries initially promised not to expand NATO, and in 1999 and 2010 they signed the official documents of OSCE summits setting forth their commitment not to ensure their own security at the expense of others, in fact NATO has been carrying out its geopolitical and military expansion in Europe for three decades, trying to establish its positions in the Trans-Caucasian region and Central Asia, creating direct threats to the security of our country. Today, the same situation is unfolding in the Asia-Pacific Region, where NATO’s infrastructure is creeping in and where narrow military and political blocs are being created, undermining the inclusive security architecture under the auspices of ASEAN, in order to contain the People’s Republic of China and Russia.

At the same time, the West not only fails to seek global cooperation called for by the UN Secretary-General, but in its doctrinal documents openly and harshly accuses Russia, China, Belarus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran of creating threats to its dominance. The goal of the strategic defeat on Russia is declared there: just as London and Washington planned in May 1945, when (before the end of the Second World War) they developed Operation Unthinkable to destroy the Soviet Union.

Primary causes of the crisis around Ukraine

In the mid-20th century, Anglo-Saxon strategists kept their aggressive plans under wraps. Today, they no longer hide their intentions. So far, their strategy has been to defeat Russia using the illegitimate and essentially neo-Nazi Kiev regime as a proxy. Evidence abounds. Kiev has aggressively promoted and continues to propagate the neo-Nazi ethos, rewrites the World War II history, and fosters nationalist sentiments among broad segments of Ukrainian society, as it strives to perpetuate the memory of Nazis and their minions. There are clear instances of the direct borrowing of Nazi symbols. It is also important to keep in mind the crimes committed for long years by irregular volunteer battalions formed from among successors to the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. Even international bodies that connive with Kiev, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, couldn’t keep silent about their atrocities.

Ukraine has become a terrorist state, which has been terrorising its own citizens and people beyond its borders for the past ten years. Despite this, the West lets the Kiev junta do as it pleases and pours vast resources into it. Considering this, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen claiming that Ukraine defends values cherished by the EU catches the eye. European Council President Charles Michel also drew parallels between Ukraine and European values. Confessions like that can hardly be interpreted as something other than a manifestation of the deep-seated Nazi core of Europe’s political class, which is on the verge of launching itself into a reckless and suicidal anti-Russia adventure. Is there any point to discuss the absurdity and danger of attempting to “wage a war to victory” against a nuclear power like Russia?

Equally absurd are Kiev’s Western masters’ mantras about there being no alternative to talks based on the infamous Zelensky formula. In an effort to uphold this doomed ultimatum, the West has no qualms making appeals to the UN Charter and demanding to ensure Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

As a reminder, the very first article of the Charter proclaims an obligation to respect the principles of equal rights and the self-determination of peoples which served as the legal foundation for the decolonisation process (which still needs to be seen to completion despite resistance from the French, British, and other former colonial powers). In 1970, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Principles of International Law…, which states that territorial integrity is respected for the states whose governments respect the right of peoples to self-determination and thus represent the entire population residing within the borders of a particular territory. This was a unanimous decision of the General Assembly after many years of difficult discussions. There is no need to prove that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, who seized power in Kiev following the bloody coup in February 2014 backed by the US and its allies, did not and do not represent the Russian population of Crimea, Donbass, and Novorossiya.

Western leaders, who obsessively use every opportunity they can get to invoke the subject of human rights, are conspicuously silent about these rights when it comes to racist moves by their Kiev clients. In light of such forgetfulness, let us recall another demand contained in that very first article of the UN Charter which is to respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of every person, regardless of race, sex, language, or religion. The rights of Russians and other ethnicities associated with Russian culture have been incrementally destroyed following the coup in Kiev. The Russian language was made illegal in all spheres of life in Ukraine, including education, the media, art, culture, and even daily life. A recently adopted law bans the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Kiev regime is waging war on everything connected with the Russian World. Russian-speaking citizens have been the most discriminated group in Ukraine for many years now. Considering this, Zelensky’s calls to abide by the UN Charter are a farce.

The above egregious violations of the rights of Russians enshrined in the UN Charter, along with threats to Russia’s security - and to all of Europe for that matter - that come from the Kiev regime and those who are trying to pull it into NATO, are the primary causes of the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The Russian special military operation is aimed at eliminating these threats in order to protect its security and the present and future of the people on their ancestral land.

We appreciate the sincere efforts, with the best of intentions, of a number of our partners to advance mediation initiatives. We respect their constructive focus on achieving a result as opposed to Zelensky’s dead-end formula. However, we urge our friends to fully consider the above facts regarding what truly caused the current situation. A just peace relying on the UN Charter cannot be achieved without first moving these causes out of the way. A realistic settlement plan was laid out by President Putin on June 14, 2024. He made a compelling case for Russia’s goodwill to achieve negotiated solutions, the prospects for which were ruined by Kiev and its patrons as a result of the 2014 coup followed by the scuttling of the 2015 Minsk Agreements and the 2022 Istanbul Agreements.

For a more just international order

The unprecedentedly arrogant and aggressive Western policy towards Russia has not only stymied the idea of global cooperation advocated by the UN Secretary-General but is also blocking the operation of the system of global governance, including   the UN Security Council. It was not our choice, and we cannot be called to account for the consequences of that dangerous course. However, all countries will be affected by these severe consequences, unless the West stops now.

It is clear to the global majority that confrontation and hegemonism cannot resolve a single global problem. They are only artificially holding back the objective shaping of a multipolar world based on equal rights of all nations, big and small, respect for the value of individuals, the quality of men and women, and the right of nations to choose their future themselves. These principles are set out in the UN Charter, just like the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, which the United States and its satellites refused to reaffirm when voting for the pact at the Summit for the Future, much to the shame of the UN member states.

In his address at the Fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum on September 18, 2024, in St Petersburg, President Putin emphasised the importance of unity for sustainable development and universal security. The extremely complicated issues, which humanity is facing, can only be resolved together and based on respect for each other’s interests. The West must accept this truth and abandon its neo-colonial practices.

The Global South and East are raising their voice to declare their right for a comprehensive engagement in decision-making on the entire range of items on the international agenda. This s becoming more and more important today when the West is consistently destroying the globalisation model it has created itself.

The role of interstate associations is growing stronger in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They include the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Arab League, the Association of South East Asian Nations, and many other organisations.

Regional integration structures are developing ties between themselves and with the global BRICS group, which offers conditions for harmonising the mechanisms of mutually beneficial cooperation and development that are not exposed to any negative external influence or dictate. All these objective processes should be taken into account in the G20 operations, where the G7 can no longer call the tune.

Eurasian security architecture

Today’s world needs to seek better ways of ensuring security in various regions, considering the unfortunate result of adopting Euro-Atlantic security models, which the West put in the service of its expansionist designs. It is of the essence to learn the lesson.

Russia has put forward an initiative to build an inclusive architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia. It is open to all states and organisations on our common continent that are willing to work out mutually acceptable solutions together, taking advantage of the interconnectedness and natural competitive advantages of our common Eurasian space. On October 31 – November 1, 2024, Minsk will host an international conference dedicated to this topic.

Establishing a space of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia is crucial amid the all-encompassing processes unfolding in the macro-region. Not only is the deterioration of the military-political situation caused by the policy of the collective West to undermine the sovereign development of the continent’s leading powers unacceptable to responsible Eurasian states. The fact is that the growing risk of local tensions evolving into a bigger regional conflict calls into question the further progressive development of the entire Eurasia, which is a major driver of global economic growth. Resolving security issues is an indispensable condition for the further dynamic development of the continent’s countries and unlocking the potential of multilateral projects they are part of.

Our initiative is based on the understanding of the need for states and multilateral organisations of the Eurasian region to assume responsibility for ensuring their own security under the ‘Eurasian solutions to Eurasian problems’ formula. Therefore, the strategic goals of the architecture that we propose call for resolving the existing disagreements on the continent by the efforts of the Eurasian countries themselves, preventing conflicts in the future, and terminating the destabilising military presence of extra-regional players in Eurasia. We are confident that all states interested in achieving long-term military and political stability will eagerly join the effort to address security issues on the basis of coordinated approaches. In our view, achieving economic growth, social progress, integration and mutually beneficial cooperation, and addressing common problems are integral parts of ensuring Eurasian security.

At the same time, we are not fencing off or excluding European states from this dialogue – provided that they are genuinely interested and are not involved in any destructive actions directed against other countries of Eurasia, the continent stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok and from Moscow to Riyadh, New Delhi, Beijing and Jakarta.

Reforming the UN Security Council

Last July, at Russia’s suggestion, the Security Council held open debates on building a fairer and more stable world order. We believe in the importance of continuing this discussion, both at the UN and at other forums. Meanwhile, it is obvious to us that a more equitable world order unconditionally presupposes increased representation of the Global South and East in the UN Security Council, i.e., African, Asian and Latin American countries. We reaffirmed our position in support of Brazil and India, provided a positive decision is reached in the framework of the well-known initiatives of the African Union. At the same time, of course, there can be no talk of additional seats for Western countries and their allies, which are already over-represented in the Security Council. This would not make any sense, and be even absurd.

However, there are those whose vision of fairness diverges from what we believe in. Many weighed in with their suggestions on reforming the UN Security Council. Antonio Guterres surprised us the most by saying that Europe has an excessive presence in this body, since France, the UK and Russia are among its permanent members. This geopolitical vision not only fails to reflect the present-day reality, but actually distorts it, especially after the UK withdrew from the EU, while Russia refused to integrate in the Euro-Atlantic and pan-European projects.

* * *

May 2025 will mark the 80th anniversary of the Victory in World War II, during which tens of millions of people, including 27 million people of various ethnic backgrounds from across the Soviet Union, fell victim to the genocidal policy of the Third Reich. Such crimes have no statute of limitations, as there is no moral justification for those who try to whitewash Nazi torturers, collaborators and their current successors in Ukraine, the Baltic States, Canada and other countries.

Today, the international community once again faces massive challenges, just like during World War II, which require united efforts rather than confrontation and desire of global dominance. Russia will always advocate collective efforts, truth and the rule of law, peace and cooperation in the interests of reviving the ideals set forth by the UN’s founding fathers. This is the aim of the Group of Friends in Defence of the Charter of the United Nations, established on the initiative of Venezuela. Its objectives and principles remain fully relevant. The main thing is that everyone, without exception, respects these principles, not selectively (choosing from the menu), but considering their holistic and interconnected nature, including the principle of the sovereign equality of states. Then, while working for the honest balance of the legitimate national interests of all countries, we can bring to life the purpose of the United Nations as stated in its Charter: “To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.”

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