🎙 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's article "The UN Charter Should Become the Legal Foundation of a Multipolar World", published in Russia in Global Affairs magazine (February 4, 2025)
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💬 80 years ago, on 4 February 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. <...>
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.
<...> 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.”
🔹 Key points:
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
❗️ 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.
🇺🇳 Russia is ready for joint honest work to balance parties’ interests and to strengthen the legal principles of international relations. <...>
The most important thing, according to Russia's President Vladimir 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.” This should be the foremost guideline for regulating international relations in the multipolar era that has dawned.