Sergey Lavrov: «The UN Charter as the legal foundation of a multipolar world»

Photo: MFA

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s article for Russia in Global Affairs magazine, «The UN Charter as the legal foundation of a multipolar world», February 4, 2025.

Eighty years ago, on February 4, 1945, the leaders of the victors of World War II − the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain − opened the Yalta Conference to determine the contours of the postwar world. Despite ideological differences, they agreed to eradicate German Nazism and Japanese militarism. The agreements reached in Crimea were reaffirmed and elaborated upon at the Potsdam Conference in July-August 1945.

One result of the negotiations was the creation of the United Nations and the approval of the UN Charter, which to this day remains the main source of international law. The Charter set forth goals and principles for countries’ behavior, which are designed to ensure their peaceful coexistence and sustained development. The principle of the sovereign equality of states laid the foundation for the Yalta-Potsdam system: none may claim dominance, as all are formally equal regardless of territory, population, military capabilities, or other metrics.

For all its strengths and weaknesses, about which scholars still argue, the Yalta-Potsdam order has provided the international system’s normative-legal framework for eight decades. The UN-based world order fulfills its main task − safeguarding everyone against a new world war. Truly, “the UN has not brought us to paradise but saved us from hell”[1]. The veto power enshrined in the Charter − which is not a “privilege”, but a burden of special responsibility for safeguarding peace − serves as a solid barrier against reckless decisions and provides room for finding compromise based on a balance of interests. The political core of the Yalta-Potsdam system, the UN has served as a unique universal platform for developing collective responses to common challenges, maintaining international peace and security and promoting socio-economic development.

It was at the UN that, with a key role played by the USSR, the foundation was laid for the multipolar world that is now emerging before our eyes. In particular, the process of decolonisation was legally implemented through the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted in 1960 at the Soviet Union’s initiative. In that era, dozens of peoples, previously oppressed by the colonial powers, for the first time obtained independence and a chance of establishing their own statehood. Today, some of these former colonies can claim to be centers of power in the multipolar world, while others belong to supranational unions with regional or continental civilisational reach.

As Russian scholars rightly note, any international institution is, above all, “a way to limit the natural egoism of states”[2]. The UN, with its consensus-agreed and adopted Charter, is no exception. The UN-centric order is thus based on international − truly universal − law, from which it follows that every state should abide by that law.

Russia, like the majority of the world community, has never had any difficulty doing so. But the West was never cured of its syndrome of exceptionalism, and retains its neocolonial habits, i.e. living at the expense of others. Interstate relations based on respect for international law were, from the very beginning, not to the West’s liking.

Former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland once frankly admitted, in an interview, that “Yalta was not a good deal for us, it was not a deal we should’ve cut”. This sort of attitude goes a long way in explaining America’s international behavior; in 1945, Washington was practically forced to grudgingly agree to the postwar world order, already perceived as a hindrance by the American elite, which soon sought to revise it. The revision began with Winston Churchill’s infamous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton in 1946, which essentially declared a Cold War against the Soviet Union. Perceiving the Yalta-Potsdam agreements as a tactical concession, the United States and its allies have never followed the UN Charter’s fundamental principle of the sovereign equality of states.

The West had a fateful chance to right its course, to show prudence and foresight, when the Soviet Union collapsed along with the world socialist camp. However, selfish instincts prevailed. Addressing Congress on September 11, 1990, intoxicated by “victory in the Cold War”, US President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the advent of a new world order[3], an order that American strategists understood as complete US dominance in the international arena, as a window of opportunity to act unilaterally without any regard for the legal restrictions embedded in the UN Charter.

One manifestation of the “rules-based order” was Washington’s policy of geopolitically absorbing Eastern Europe. Russia has been forced to eliminate its explosive consequences with the special military operation.

In 2025, with Donald Trump’s Republican administration back in power, Washington’s interpretation of international processes since World War II has taken on a new dimension, as vividly described in the Senate by new Secretary of State Marco Rubio on January 15: not only is the postwar world order outdated, but it has been turned into a weapon against US interests[4]. In other words, not only the Yalta-Potsdam order is undesirable; so, too, is the “rules-based order” that had seemed to embody the selfishness and arrogance of the US-led West after the Cold War. “America first” is alarmingly similar to the Hitlerite slogan “Germany above all”, and a wager on “peace through strength” may be the final blow to diplomacy. Not to mention that such statements and ideological constructs do not show even the slightest bit of respect for Washington’s international legal obligations under the UN Charter.

However, today is not 1991 or even 2017, when the incumbent US President took the helm for the first time. Russian analysts rightly note that “there will be no return to the previous state of affairs, still sought after by the US and its allies, because demographic, economic, social, and geopolitical conditions have changed irreversibly”[5]. There is also probably truth in the prediction that eventually “the United States will understand that it should not overstretch its area of responsibility in international affairs, and will live quite harmoniously as one of the leading states, but no longer a hegemon”[6].

Multipolarity is gaining momentum and, instead of opposing it, the US could in the foreseeable future become a responsible center of power along with Russia, China, and other states in the Global South, East, North, and West. For the moment, it seems that the new US administration will be launching cowboy raids to test the existing UN-centric system’s limits and durability versus American interests. But I am sure that this administration, too, will soon understand that international reality is much more complex than the caricatures that it is free to deploy before internal American audiences or obedient geopolitical allies.

While we wait for the Americans to sober up and realise this, we will continue to work conscientiously with our like-minded partners to adapt the mechanisms of interstate relations to multipolarity, and to the Yalta-Potsdam international legal consensus that is embodied in the UN Charter. It is worth noting the BRICS Kazan Declaration of October 23, 2024, which clearly reaffirms the World Majority’s united “commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN Charter as its indispensable cornerstone and the UN’s central role in the international system”[7]. This approach has been formulated by leading states that shape the modern world and represent the majority of its population. Yes, our partners in the South and East have quite legitimate wishes regarding their participation in global governance. Unlike the West, they, and we, are ready for honest and open discussions on all issues.

Our position on UN Security Council reform is well known[8]. Russia seeks to make this body more democratic by expanding the representation of the World Majority: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We support the applications of Brazil and India for permanent seats on the Security Council, while also working to correct − by means agreed upon by the Africans themselves − the historical injustice towards the African continent. Allocating additional seats to countries of the collective West, already overrepresented in the Security Council, is counterproductive. Germany and Japan, having delegated much of their sovereignty to their overseas patron, and having begun reviving the ghosts of Nazism and militarism at home, cannot bring anything new to the Security Council’s work.

We are strongly committed to the inviolability of the UNSC permanent members’ prerogatives. Given the unpredictable policy of the Western minority, only the veto power can ensure that the Council’s decisions take into account all parties’ interests.

The UN Secretariat’s personnel policy remains insulting to the World Majority, as Westerners still predominate in all key positions. Alignment of the UN bureaucracy with the geopolitical world map cannot be delayed, as stated quite unambiguously in the above-mentioned BRICS Kazan Declaration. We shall see how receptive the UN leadership, accustomed to serving the interests of a narrow group of Western countries, will be to this call.

As for the UN Charter’s normative framework, I am convinced that it optimally meets the needs of the multipolar era, an era when everyone must observe − not only in word, but in deed − the principles of the sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, and other fundamental principles. Such principles include the right of peoples to self-determination, the consensus interpretation of which is enshrined in the 1970 UN Declaration on Principles of International Law: a state’s territorial integrity must be respected if its government represents its entire population. It goes without saying that, since the February 2014 coup, the Kiev regime does not represent the people of Crimea, Donbass, or Novorossiya any more than the Western powers represented the peoples of the colonial territories that they exploited.

Brazen attempts to reorder the world in one’s own interest, violating UN principles, may bring instability, confrontation, and even catastrophe. Given the current level of international tensions, a reckless rejection of the Yalta-Potsdam system, with the UN and its Charter at its core, will inevitably lead to chaos.

One often hears that it is premature to speak of the desired world order at a time when we are still fighting to suppress the Western-supported forces of the racist regime in Kiev. This is, in our view, a baneful approach. The contours of the postwar world order, and the key points of the UN Charter, were discussed by the Allies at the height of World War II, including at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers and the Tehran Conference of heads of state and government in 1943, and during other contacts between the future victorious powers, up to the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in 1945. Although our allies already had a secret agenda, this did not detract from the enduring importance of the supreme principles of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, peaceful settlement of disputes, and “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”.

The West evidently subscribed to these principles with ulterior motives, and then grossly violated them in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, but that does not mean that we should relieve the United States and its satellites of moral and legal responsibility, or should abandon the unique legacy of the UN’s founders as embodied in the UN Charter[9]. If, God forbid, someone tries to rewrite it (under the pretext of getting rid of the “outdated” Yalta-Potsdam system), the world will have no common guiding values left.

Russia is ready for joint honest work to balance parties’ interests and to strengthen the legal principles of international relations. President Vladimir Putin’s 2020 initiative for a meeting of the leaders of the UNSC’s permanent members, who bear “special responsibility for the preservation of civilisation”[10], sought an equitable dialogue on all these issues. For well-known reasons beyond Russia’s control, this initiative did not go any further. But we keep our hopes up, although the participants and format of such meetings may now be different. The most important thing, according to Putin, is “to regain an understanding of what the United Nations was created for, and to follow the principles that are set forth in its founding documents”[11]. This should be the foremost guideline for regulating international relations in the multipolar era that has dawned.

[1] RGP, 2020. Можно ли представить мир без ООН? [Can we imagine a world without the UN?]. CFDP and Gorchakov Foundation roundtable discussion Rossiya v globalnoi politike, November 26. Available at: https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/mozhno-li-predstavit-mir-bez-oon/ [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[2] Ibid.

[3] Bush, George H.W., 1990. Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit. The American Presidency Project. Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-before-joint-session-the-congress-the-persian-gulf-crisis-and-the-federal-budget [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[4] Rubio, M., 2025. Opening Remarks by Secretary of State-Designate Marco Rubio Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 15, 2025. Official websites use .gov.  Available at: https://www.state.gov/opening-remarks-by-secretary-of-state-designate-marco-rubio-before-the-senate-foreign-relations-committee/ [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[5] Lukyanov, F.A., 2025. Downward. Russia in Global Affairs, 23(1). Available at: https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/downward-lukyanov/ [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[6] Sushentsov, A.A., 2023. The Crumbling of the World Order and a Vision of Multipolarity: The Position of Russia and the West. Valdai Discussion Club, November 20, 2023. Available at: https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-crumbling-of-the-world-order-and-a-vision/ [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[7] 16th BRICS Summit, 2024. Kazan Declaration. Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security. Kazan, Russian Federation, October 23, 2024. Available at: https://cdn.brics-russia2024.ru/upload/docs/Kazan_Declaration_FINAL.pdf?1729693488349783 [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[8] See: Lavrov, S.V., 2023. Genuine Multilateralism and Diplomacy vs the “Rules-Based Order”. Russia in Global Affairs, 21(3). Available at: https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/genuine-multilateralism/ https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/genuine-multilateralism/[Accessed January 31, 2025].

[9] See: Lavrov, S.V., 2023. Соблюдение принципов Устава ООН во всей их совокупности и взаимосвязи – залог международного мира и стабильности [Observance of the UN Charter’s Principles in Totality and Conjunction Is a Guarantee of International Peace and Stability]. Rossiya v globalnoi politike, 21(6). Available at: https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/soblyudenie-princzipov-ustava-oon/ [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[10] Putin, V., 2020. Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism forum. January 23, 2020 President of Russia. Available at: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62646 [Accessed January 31, 2025].

[11] Putin, V., 2025. Press conference following Russian-Iranian talks. January 17, 2025. President of Russia. Available at: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/76126 [Accessed January 31, 2025].

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