On Monday, Ukraine demanded that Russia be expelled from the UN, where Moscow holds the power of veto over any resolution as a permanent member of the Security Council.
In a statement, the foreign ministry said that Ukraine “calls on the member states of the UN… to deprive the Russian Federation of its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to expel it from the UN as a whole.”
Since the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, the statement claimed, Russia had “illegally occupied the USSR seat in the UN Security Council.”
“From a legal and political point of view, there can be only one conclusion: Russia is an usurper of the Soviet Union’s seat in the UN Security Council,” the ministry added.
“Three decades of its illegal presence in the UN have been marked by wars and seizures of other countries’ territories,” the statement said.
The 15-member UN Security Council’s five permanent members have veto power over any resolutions.
