Status of the former USSR's UN memberships, and legality of Russia's claim to it | Why Russia is not a member of the United Nations.
The USSR’s memberships of the United Nations and all related bodies, including it’s Security Council permanent membership, ended when the USSR ceased to exist.
The USSR’s memberships of the United Nations and all related bodies, including it’s Security Council permanent membership, ended when the USSR ceased to exist.
Let me explain the law by using examples you may be familiar with.
1. Can a country take over the UN membership of another country?
If one of your lawmakers dies, and I move into that lawmaker's office, sit in your parliament and start voting and speaking as if I am that lawmaker, when I have never been elected to your parliament, does that make me a lawmaker?
It makes me an impostor. And your parliament in violation of the law.
That is exactly what Boris Yeltsin tried to do with USSR's membership of the UN.
No country can become a member except by being appointed in accordance with the rules in Article 4 of the UN Charter.
All the other former members of the USSR joined under Article 4.
But Yeltsin decided to try to sidestep the law, and gaslight his way into a veto which Russia had no claim to, by announcing that Russia (which wasn’t even a member of the UN) was “continuing” the membership of a completely different state.
That announcement had no legal effect whatsoever. It is a legal nullity.
You can read Yeltsin’s letter to the UN Secretary General dated 24 December 1991 on the UN web site. (edit - this page was removed from the UN site in late January this year, 2024, and reappeared months later. The link is to the archive of that page.
You can also read on the UN web site. that Yeltsin's letter has never even been acknowledged.
2. If no one says anything, does that make me a “de facto” lawmaker?:
No, because the law says I am not a lawmaker.
It makes no difference what anyone else says or doesn’t say. You can’t change the law by saying something or nothing.
What is “de facto”?
De facto means a situation which is not legal. The best example is a de facto marriage. People living together in relationship similar to marriage but without being legally married is a de facto marriage.
Laws applicable to marriage (rights and obligations such as property division, and custody of children, tax etc) do not apply to de facto marriages. (The law has been changed in some countries to give varying rights and obligations to people in de facto relationships.)
3. What happens to permanent memberships of the UN Security Council if the permanent member ceases to exist?
Now, what if that lawmaker wasn't elected, but had been given a special life ("permanent") membership (like an honorary life membership of a club, or a life peerage in the UK House of Lords, for special services provided). What happens to that person's honorary life membership when they die?
Can someone else take over that person's honorary life membership after they have died, and use the dead person's vote?
Does that honorary life membership go to some sort of membership waiting room where anyone else can grab it?
No, the honorary life membership ends when the honorary member dies.
And that is exactly the situation of UNSC permanent memberships, and the vetoes attached to them.
No country can be a permanent member unless it is named in Article 23 of the UN Charter.
Boris Yeltsin announced he was taking over a membership which had ended. Again, a nullity in law.
UN Membership Law:
(a) The case of the secession of Pakistan from India in 1947:
Membership rights and obligations cease to exist when a State ceases to exist.
In the case of the secession of Pakistan from India in 1947, the UN’s Sixth (legal) Committee provided a legal determination (“the India Partition determination”), accepted by the General Assembly that:
“1. As a general rule, it is in accordance with principle to assume that a State which is a Member of the United Nations does not cease to be a Member from the mere fact that its constitution or frontiers have been modified, and to consider the rights and obligations which that State possesses as a Member of the United Nations as ceasing to exist only with its extinction as a legal person internationally recognized as such.
2. When a new State is created, whatever the territory and the population which compose it, and whether these have or have not been part of a State Member of the United Nations, this new State cannot, under the system provided for by the Charter, claim the status of Member of the United Nations unless it has been formally admitted as such in conformity with provisions of the Charter
3. Each case must, however, be judged on its merits.”
India retained its UN membership because it had not ceased to exist, but had merely changed its constitution and frontiers.
The former USSR indisputably falls into the second category in paragraph 1. By the time that Yeltsin wrote his letter, the former USSR was “extinct as a legal person internationally recognized as such”. Therefore “the rights and obligations which [the USSR] possesse[d] as a Member of the United Nations ceas[ed] to exist”, with that “extinction”.
(The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), as it was at the time, had no change at all. It had been one of 13 states which were not members of the UN when it was a member of the USSR, and it remained a state which was not a member of the UN when it left the USSR. It had no territorial changes. It had never been a member of the UN. No fairy arrived, waved a wand and changed Russia into the USSR, or into a member of the UN.)
Clause 2 of the 6th Committee determination above logically applies to it - even if the USSR hadn’t been extinguished (a straw the Kremlin has more recently invented and clutched at).
Exactly like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had no change. They had been States (and members of the UN) when they were members of the USSR, and they remained States (and members of the UN) when they left the USSR.
(b) the case of The Socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia in 1992:
States which formed part of a Member of the United Nations (but had never been the entire Member, unlike India) cannot claim to “continue” the membership, but must apply to join.
“Inheritance”
4. If I later claim I have "inherited" that lawmaker's membership of your parliament, or the honorary membership, does that change anything?
No, I am still there illegally, because I have not been elected or appointed.
Russia was not even in the USSR.
Russia’s troll factory claim is in fact even more ridiculous, because Russia was not even IN, not even PART OF, let alone “was” or “inherited”, the USSR when it was dissolved. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had left the USSR on 8 December 1991 (the Belavezha Accord).
The USSR had only 8 states members when it was dissolved on 21 December 1991 (the Alma Ata Declaration). None of them claimed “inheritance”.
(BTW, even Yeltsin was not stupid enough to claim any right to "inherit" in 1991 – it would have been shot down In flames at the time. He simply said a some of the other ex-Soviet states “supported” him. Notably missing: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.)
5. Another example: Life peerages:
In the UK House of Lords a person can be appointed a life peer. That, peerage makes the person a named member of the House of Lords. Just like the USSR was appointed as a named member of the UN and the Security Council. No other person can claim that membership after the peer has died. It simply can’t be inherited. It ended when the peer died.
Russia has not “Inherited” anything at all from the USSR.
What was the USSR?:
The USSR was formed in 1922 by a treaty between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and another state which no longer exists.
They created an umbrella state which was made up of it’s members.
It had no territory of it’s own, so was not a state in the ordinary sense of the word.
The treaty and the Subsequent Constitution provided that all the territories and other property such as infrastructure (roads, power plants) and utilities (airlines, gas companies) in its member States became the property of all the citizens of the USSR.
Member states could leave at any time (theoretically), as they ultimately did in 1990-1991.
6. Another example: a club:
We can use the analogy of a club. A club is created when people get together and agree that they will be members, and act together through the club, for a particular purpose. It might be to advance their sporting interests. It might be to preserve memories and help each other (like returned services clubs). The members contribute and the club owns those contributions, and can invest, buy property and pay for services etc.
The Kremlin somehow "inherited" an expired membership of a state which Russia itself had left before it ceased to exist (while it was still in existence with other members)?
(See the Belavezha Declaration - Russia left on 8 December, Ratified the Agreement on 12 December; and the Alma Ata declaration by the remaining members 21 December; above.)
- That is exactly like leaving a club you were a member of, then some time later, trying to claim you "inherited" the club's powers.
References:
1. 2022-07-27 Fraud of the United Nations: how to throw Russia out of a place in the UN Security Council that does not belong to it | European truth
(a) legally void letter
(b) Bialowieza Agreement, which begins with the preamble " The USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist .
(c) According to the treaty on the founding of the USSR, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were equal and equal co-founding countries.
(d) The USSR was founded in 1922 by four specific countries: Ukraine (USSR), Russia (RSFSR), Belarus (BRSR), and the Transcaucasian Republic (USSR).
(e) 26, 1991, the Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR officially confirmed the provisions of the Agreement: it adopted the corresponding Declaration, which stated "that with the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Union of the SSR as a state and a subject of international law ceases to exist."
(f) Treaty on Legal Succession " was concluded between the Union republics on December 4, 1991
(g) Russia did not fulfill it and appropriated all Soviet property, although Ukraine had get 16.37%
(h) Russia and the USSR are different states that even existed in parallel for a certain period of history,
(i) legal point of view, such a decision is null and void
(j) member states of the CIS no longer had any relationship with the previously liquidated USSR in order to make decisions on its behalf about legal succession.
(k) adoption of a decision on confirmation of membership belongs exclusively to the powers of the General Assembly
(l) asked "instead of the name of the USSR to use the name of the Russian Federation in the UN
(m) UN Secretary General to replace one country with another in the UN and the Security Council without a decision of the General Assembly.
(n) circumvention of procedures and in violation of the UN Charter
(o) few days later
(p) lack of objections (any answers)
(q) UN Secretariat replaced the name "USSR" on the plates and future documents with "Russia"
(r) ontrary to Article 23 of the UN Charter
(s) powers of the Russian Federation are supported only by a scan of Boris Yeltsin's letter dated December 24, 1991
(t) UN Secretary General and the organization's legal department knew that such substitutions could be considered illegal, so they tried to protect themselves with various consultations.
(u) there were UN countries that protested against the possibility of such a replacement and insisted on a vote of the General Assembly on the entry of the Russian Federation into the UN as a new member, and also talked about the impossibility of transferring a seat in the Security Council to the Russian Federation, because in the statute The membership of another state - the USSR - is clearly spelled out in the UN.
(v) head of the General Assembly allegedly invited the opinion of the International Court of Justice
(w) the judges answered the head in a private conversation: "As you decide in the UN, so shall it be
(x) suggested by the American government lawyers
(y) "replacement of license plates" trick to circumvent the UN Charter
(z) "sculpted" the image of a "continuator" from their own statements and agreements after the fact,
(aa) n January 13, 1992, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia sent a letter to the diplomatic missions accredited in Moscow, stating that the Russian Federation continues to fulfill its obligations under the previously concluded bilateral and multilateral treaties of the USSR.
(bb) only in 1993, Russia announced that it would assume all the debts of the USSR in exchange for the refusal of the former republics to claim assets - despite the fact that, for example, there was no such official refusal on the part of Ukraine.
(cc)Russian Federation itself has not yet adopted any law regarding the transfer of rights and responsibilities from the USSR to the Russian Federation.
