US Congress wants to boot Russia from UN Security Council

Two US lawmakers Steve Cohen and Joe Wilson have introduced a resolution that calls on President Joe Biden to boot Russia from the United Nations Security Council, just days before Moscow’s flagging full-scale invasion of Ukraine is set to hit its ten-month mark.

The bipartisan Helsinki Commission, which called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to protest Russia’s standing as a permanent Security Council member in October, wants Congress to argue that Russia’s war has violated the “purposes and principles of the United Nations” and asks US government agencies to take steps to limit Russia’s privileges at the UN, though it gives the administration some free rein to determine how it might act, Caliber.Az reports, citing Foreign Policy.

Cohen and Wilson said that Russia had committed “flagrant violations” of the UN Charter that call into question its right to hold a Security Council seat, including the illegal annexation vote in four Ukrainian oblasts, the perpetration of atrocities in Ukrainian cities such as Bucha, nuclear sabre-rattling, and creating risks to the world’s food supply.

Ukraine has also advocated for Russia to be removed from the council, though experts doubt that such efforts will work. The UN’s governing charter doesn’t contain any provisions for removing a permanent member of the Security Council. While countries can be removed from the UN altogether, doing so would require a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly, including the unanimous consent of the council itself.

Though House resolutions are not binding law, the move solidifies thinking both on Capitol Hill and within the Biden administration about how to curb Russian influence in Turtle Bay. The resolution pushes forward a previous effort from the Helsinki Commission—which was created in 1975 as part of a US law that solidified the brief detente between the United States and the Soviet Union - calling on the State Department to initiate a process to strip Russia’s seat on the top UN body.