Veto Russia
September 25, 2025
President Donald Trump dropped several bombshells at the United Nations this week: He stated that Ukraine should and will win back all the land that Russia has stolen since 2014; that NATO allies should shoot down Russian aircraft encroaching on their airspace; and that the US will provide NATO with all the weapons it needs to help Ukraine and itself fend off Moscow. He also claimed that excessive migration and political correctness were threats to Western Civilization, but failed to mention the single biggest threat to mankind, which is Vladimir Putin, his wars, and his sabotage of peacekeeping efforts at the UN. Russia is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council whose purpose is to maintain international peace and security. But the country remained on the Council after its tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. One year later, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared at the Security Council to request that Russia’s veto power be removed and said, “the veto has turned the Council into a morgue, blocking every effort to stop the slaughter.”
Russia must be banned from UN membership and declared a terrorist state. Its ongoing involvement in the Security Council is equivalent to putting a serial killer in charge of the NYPD. That’s what the UN did in 1991 when it allowed Russia to replace the Soviet Union as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council with a veto. The Soviet Union was also abusive and the first to use the veto in 1946, but Russia has gone further to clear the way for its warfare. It blocked action on Syria starting in the 2010s, vetoed a resolution on Crimea in 2014, and prevented a vote on its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Veto power is controversial, and some proponents argue that it’s needed because: a) the UN would break down if it attempted to enforce binding action against any permanent member, and b) the veto is a critical safeguard against United States domination. However, it’s been weaponized by Russia, is undemocratic, provides immunity for other permanent members or their allies, and is the reason behind the United Nations’ years of inaction against wars, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It’s a privilege that has been abused. The Security Council veto privilege was granted to the five permanent members who “won” the Second World War – Russia, the US, the UK, France, and China. Another ten countries from the overall membership rotate in and out of the Council, but any of the five can veto a resolution even if all 14 other members approve it.
All five states have used their vetoes over the years to circumvent international laws. Russia invades its neighbors while vetoing any response. China shields allies. The US launched its own misadventures—Vietnam, Iraq, Libya—without fear of accountability. Britain and France have used their veto immunity to commit atrocities in their colonies after the war. As of late 2025, the United States, along with others, has used veto power in the UN Security Council dozens of times to block resolutions or prevent the deployment of peacekeepers.
Ironically, Russia shouldn’t have been allowed to sit on the Council. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, its 15 republics became independent states. Ukraine, which had fought more and suffered more wartime casualties than Russia itself, should have been given the honor of a permanent Security Council seat for helping defeat the Nazis. Instead, Boris Yeltsin simply declared that Russia would inherit the Soviet Union’s position. No legal vote ratified this takeover. The world simply acquiesced, and that mistake has paralyzed global governance ever since.
Russia used its veto to shield its murderous forays in Syria and elsewhere. Worse, Putin timed his Ukraine invasion for February 2022 precisely because that’s when Russia held the Council’s rotating presidency. In the days before the assault, Moscow stacked Council sessions with operatives spewing lies about Ukrainian “Nazis.” When the invasion began, Russia vetoed even a symbolic condemnation. The General Assembly condemned the invasion, but the Security Council’s inaction meant there would never be peacekeeping efforts.
To remove Russia, the UN Charter itself must be changed, but it cannot be because the process is rigged. Expelling a Security Council member requires a recommendation from the Security Council itself — but Russia or the other permanent members can simply veto their own expulsion. Checkmate. This rule is why the United Nations cannot keep the peace or control Putin’s global warmongering.
NATO, too, is broken. Founded in 1949, it now has 32 members. But every action requires unanimity, which means that pro-Putin Hungary can paralyze the alliance. This unanimity requirement prevented Ukraine and Georgia from joining, leaving both exposed to Russian predations. For years, Germany’s pacifist constitution blocked decisive NATO support for Ukraine. And now the same “vetocracy” issue afflicts the European Union (EU) with 27 members. As with the UN or NATO, the requirement for EU unanimity has turned the veto into a weapon of mass dysfunction. And Putin has benefited from such paralysis.
The Security Council should be democratized, and Ukraine and India should also be granted permanent seats. Each contributed enormously to defeating Hitler, the criteria for any veto holder on the Security Council. Ukraine lost as many as 14 million people during the Second World War, more than did Russia, because the fiercest battles of the Eastern Front were fought on its soil. India, under British command, sent 2.5 million volunteers to fight the Nazis; 87,000 died, and three million civilians starved when Britain diverted food shipments to help Europe’s war effort.
Now, Ukraine has Europe’s most effective military force and protects Europe from Russia, and India is the second-largest military force in the world and provides more peacekeepers for the United Nations than do most members. Even so, India is impeded from joining the Security Council as a permanent member by its arch-rival, China, which vetoes its requests for Council membership. Likewise, Russia claims to be the “victor state,” even as it destroys the very country—Ukraine—without whose resistance Hitler would have triumphed and conquered Russia. India openly lobbies for a permanent seat, and so should Ukraine.
Russia’s vetoes impede stability and solutions. The International Criminal Court also cannot act without Security Council authorization. That means Putin himself, an indicted war criminal, must consent to his own prosecution. This is not international law. It is an international farce. The UN and Security Council have been neutered. The General Assembly is a debating society. NATO and the EU are also hobbled by vetoes.
Meanwhile, Putin rampages while post-war institutions, paralyzed, watch from the sidelines. Civilians are bombed and children abducted by the thousands. The reality is that as long as Russia remains on the Security Council, the UN will be irrelevant and damaging. As currently constituted, the UN gives Russia a license to kill and upend the world. That is the message that President Trump should have delivered this week.
I was a member of two Quaker (Society of Friends) meetings during the 80s, and there is much to recommend both their approach to personal responsibility, commitment to social justice and structuring of power. But one of the more salient reasons I resigned from those memberships was that decisions affecting the entire meeting had to be arrived at by total consensus, which sometimes left important decisions hanging for years, even about slight matters. A single cranky or oddball member who's personal mission in life was tied to a self-concept of opposition for its own sake could thereby gain the power to grind things to a halt. Which is why, even with its own inherent flaws, majority rule is preferable. Your exposition of this issue is brilliant, Diane. Many thanks.
The irony of Hungary, apparently anti-Soviet Union when NATO came together, is now pro-Russia, after Russia co-opted the permanent Security Council seat from the same Soviet Union. That alone should have forced Hungary out of NATO, no?