On 24 April 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov presided over a UN Security Council meeting on the “Maintenance of international peace and security: Effective multilateralism through the Defense of the Principles of the UN Charter”.

It should be recalled that the interpretation of the Charter of the United Nations was elucidated in the “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” (resolution 2625 of 15 December 1970). This text does not prohibit war, but addresses a situation in the event of failure to reach a solution by peaceful means.

Western countries have condemned the Russian Federation and its “invasion of Ukraine,” which they consider to contravene the Charter of the United Nations, based on the ruling by the International Court of Justice (the in-house tribunal of the UN) ordering Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. This is a dishonest reading considering that this decision is not related to the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but to the accusation of genocide levelled by Russia against Ukraine in the Donbass. Be that as it may, Russia has since released a number of written documents and videos substatiating its claims.

For their part, Russia and China demanded, as a matter of priority, that all countries abide by their written commitments: that is, that all international treaties be applied. This common position constitutes, de facto, an extension of Russia’s proposal regarding security guarantees, presented on 17 December 2021, and coincides with the spirit of the Xi-Putin Summit last month.

It is not only NATO’s expansion to the East that is at issue, but the violation of the multiple written commitments in this area.

For example :
– In 1947, Finland pledged in writing to remain neutral. Its NATO membership is therefore a violation of its own signature.
– At the time of their creation, in 1990, the Baltic States undertook a written commitment to preserve the monuments honoring the sacrifices of the Red Army. Their destruction is therefore a violation of their own signature.
– On 25 October 1971, the United Nations adopted resolution 2758 recognizing that Beijing, and not Taiwan, is the sole legitimate representative of China. As a result, Chiang Kai-shek’s government was expelled from the Security Council and replaced by that of Mao Zedong. Therefore, to take an example, the recent Chinese naval maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait do not constitute an aggression against a sovereign state, but a free deployment of China’s forces in its own territorial waters.
etc., etc.

International peace, therefore, depends on whether the rules that apply are those framed within international law, based on bilateral treaties and drawn up collectively, or those that have been designed by the collective West alone.

(To be continued ...)