A clutch of Republican senators will lead the charge to curtail Russian impunity at the United Nations by challenging the idea that it is the rightful heir to the Soviet Union’s seat on the Security Council.  

The push to officially consign Russia to the outskirts of the global order comes even as President Putin’s forces ravage Ukrainian cities in a wide-ranging, unprovoked territorial assault. 

Nine Republican senators — Blackburn, Cramer, Daines, Ernst, Grassley, Hyde-Smith, Scott, Tillis, and Wicker — have come out in support of the Ukrainian-led effort to expel Russia from the Security Council and defang its ever-present veto power, and they are drafting legislation to that effect. 

Their stance indicates that at least a portion of the GOP is positioning itself as a bastion of support for a country staggering under invasion and siege. It hints at a potential bulwark against Russian imperialism at a moment when the global order is struggling to respond.  

With the Ukrainian ambassador challenging his colleagues in an emergency session of the General Assembly to raise their hands if their respective countries voted to admit Russia — none could, because there was no formal vote in 1991 — the argument that Russia is an interloper rather than a pillar of the international order has quickly commuted from Talmudic argument over U.N. bylaws to headline news.   

This is a case that was being pressed by Ukraine alone, attempting to take the offensive on the diplomatic front even while holding off the Russian dictator’s assault on its territory. It is a daring gambit to free the Security Council from Russia’s chokehold by reshuffling the diplomatic deck.

No Democrats have yet indicated any interest in pursuing this avenue of opposition to Mr. Putin, and the Biden administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has preemptively ruled out any efforts to do so.  

As symbolic efforts to make Russia a global pariah accelerate, this insurgent push to mute the the invaders on the international mainstage promises not just bark, but also bite. 

Senator Ernst, in explaining her support for the initiative, called Russia’s presence on the Security Council “an absolute disgrace” and said it should be expelled “immediately.”

While questioning Russia’s presence on the Security Council is underlined with the urgency of the moment, making that argument does require recourse to the U.N’.s history and founding documents.

Article 23 of the U.N. Charter reads: “The Security Council shall consist of eleven Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council.”

Russia was never officially voted in to succeed the USSR. Rather, President Yeltsin simply informed the body via a December 24, 1991, phone call that his country would be occupying the seat. 

Three days later, the Belarusian representative to the U.N. told the secretary-general that the 11 post-Soviet states all supported Russia acceding to the Security Council. 

That reality was confirmed three days later by the Council of Heads of State of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but once again without any formal international or American acquiescence.  

According to the amendment procedures in Article 108 of the U.N. Charter, altering the membership of the Security Council would require a two-thirds vote of all the members of the United Nations, in addition to all current members of the Security Council. 

Ukraine argues that because the charter mentions “the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” what is required is not so much an amendment of  the text as a plain reading of it.

While sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight, international law scholars are skeptical of this line of argument.  One law professor, Allen Weiner, tells the Sun that there was no controversy when Russia first acceded to the Security Council, and its size and population give it a fair claim to serve as a continuation of the defunct Soviet regime. 

Russia’s claims are based not on the solid footing of documented changes in status but rather on what lawyers call estoppel, the idea that custom and practice impose an imprimatur of legitimacy.

The focus on Russia’s legitimacy at the United Nations has cast an intriguing shadow on its powerful neighbor to the east. The U.N. Charter allocates a seat to the “Republic of China,” but today Beijing claims that chair over Taiwan, which was expelled in the process of being replaced.   

That shift occurred in 1971, when what the General Assembly called “the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China” were restored and Communist China gained a seat at the table as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations.” The New York Times called the accession of the Beijing regime a “historic step that was long overdue.”   

If with regards to Russia the question is whether today’s Russian Federation is the successor to the USSR, then China forces the question of which China is the legitimate one  — the one helmed by the Chinese Communit Party that currently sits there and backstops Russian aggression, or the Free Chinese regime at Taipei.

While this might sound like so much international intrigue, no change to Russia’s U.N. status will take place without a vote much closer to home. 

That is because on July 28, 1945, by an 89-2 vote in the Senate, America signed onto the United Nations as an Article II Treaty, which along with the Constitution itself and federal laws are considered “the supreme law of the land.” 

As another law professor, Lori Damrosch, explains to the Sun, any change in the U.N. Charter would thus have to pass the Senate with a two-thirds vote. 

Despite this high bar, the U.N. Charter has been amended five times, most significantly in 1965, when Article 23 was altered to expand the Security Council to 15 from 11 members. 

The road to it happening again with the effect of sidelining Mr. Putin’s Russia might seem like an improbable one, but that it is even being considered speaks to the ground shifting beneath Russia’s diplomatic feet.