The Legal Architecture Of Impunity: How Russia Stole Its Veto Power
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
I have decided to gradually free articles like this, published over a year ago, from the paywall, as proof of the correctness and dramatic relevance of their content.
Lviv, Ukraine — Who was the man who handed Russia the Soviet Union’s seat at the United Nations Security Council — and with it, a veto power it was never legally entitled to hold?
The answer, buried beneath decades of diplomatic inertia, is both astonishing and damning. But to understand it fully, we need to go back to the beginning.
In April 2022, the Russian Federation assumed the presidency of the United Nations Security Council. This happened two months after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — an act built upon a decade of progressive aggression and crimes against humanity serious enough for the European Parliament to designate Russia a “State sponsor of terrorism”. Despite this designation, Russia not only held the UNSC presidency but also continues to exercise veto power, raising fundamental ethical, moral, and legal questions under international law.
How can this be?
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established on December 30, 1922, by four founding entities: the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The founding document of the USSR affirmed the principle of absolute legal equality among all republics and recognized each republic's right to unilaterally sever ties and regain independence as a sovereign state.
Subsequently, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were incorporated. After World War II, all territories occupied by the Soviets — including Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia — were absorbed into the USSR, bringing the total number of republics to fifteen.
Throughout the entire existence of the Union, no founding member ever exercised its right to dissolve the 1922 pact.
The agreement signed on December 8, 1991, in Bia?owie?a, which formalized the dissolution of the USSR, reiterated the text of the founding act in its entirety, with the following premise:
«The USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, ceases to exist».
This was a consensual dissolution, subsequently validated by the Supreme Council of Soviet Republics on December 26 of the same year. Under the terms of that agreement, no single country could inherit the rights and obligations of the former USSR in its entirety.
Such inheritance would have been legally conceivable only if one or more republics had withdrawn from the Union while it remained in existence — a scenario in which the USSR would have contracted but survived, with its international legal personality intact. This mechanism was explicitly guaranteed by Article 72 of the USSR statute. The Baltic states successfully gained independence through precisely this procedure the previous year.
Russia and the USSR were two distinct legal entities that coexisted for a time.Russia was never granted the right to identify itself with the USSR in any legally recognized context.
The United Nations grants no automatic right of succession allowing a country to inherit another state’s membership or permanent seat.
The procedural record is unambiguous.
When Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1992, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each submitted independent membership applications. The dissolution of Yugoslavia produced the same result: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia each initiated separate accession processes. As for China — often cited as a precedent — the case is more instructive than it might appear. The People’s Republic of China did not wait over twenty years for a standard procedural reason: it was the United States that blocked the PRC’s recognition in the Security Council, using political leverage to preserve the Republic of China’s seat on Taiwan. When that blockage finally collapsed, General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971 was required to formally transfer the seat.
Even in the most powerful political organization in the world, succession required an explicit act — it was never automatic.
The underlying legal framework confirms this.
The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties of 1978 — the closest instrument international law possesses to a codified rulebook for state succession — does not provide for the automatic transfer of exclusive political status.
A permanent seat on the Security Council, with its attendant veto, is not a treaty obligation that passes by operation of law from one state to another: it is an intrinsic attribute of the original subject, inseparable from the legal personality that generated it. When that personality ceases to exist — as the Bia?owie?a agreement explicitly declared — the attribute ceases with it. There is no legal pipeline through which it flows to a successor.
Against this backdrop, on December 21, 1991, the leaders of the former Soviet republics signed the Almaty Declaration. Meeting as the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States — not as the USSR, which had ceased to exist — they endorsed Russia’s admission to the United Nations as an independent state pursuing its own accession process, not as the heir to the Soviet Union.
Legally, the Almaty Declaration was signed by an entity with no authority to transfer the USSR’s international legal personality.
It was, in strict terms, void as an instrument of succession.
Nevertheless, Boris Yeltsin used it to formally request that the Russian Federation inherit the Soviet veto at the Security Council.
And, in a unique historical event, the President of the United Nations Security Council accepted that request.
Who was he?
Former USSR ambassador Yulij Vorontsov.
Born in Leningrad, died in Moscow. He served as the last Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1990 to 1991 — and then, seamlessly, as the first Russian Permanent Representative from 1991 to 1994. The man tasked with ruling on Russia’s eligibility to inherit the Soviet seat was the Soviet diplomat who had just vacated it.
His successor in that role is Vasily Alekseyevich Nebenzya, who, as of this writing, still serves in the position.
Defenders of Russia’s legal position sometimes invoke the doctrine of acquiescence: since no UN member state formally protested the 1991 transfer at the time, the argument runs, the international community tacitly ratified it, and that silence has since hardened into accepted practice. The argument is seductive but does not withstand scrutiny.
Acquiescence can cure procedural irregularities at the margins of international law. It cannot cure a structural defect at its core. The permanent seat and veto are not peripheral privileges — they are the load-bearing architecture of the Security Council’s enforcement function, the mechanism through which the UN Charter’s guarantee of collective security is either operationalized or paralyzed. When the beneficiary of that mechanism is itself the source of the threat to peace, a violation of such magnitude cannot be laundered into legitimacy by the passage of time or the silence of states that lacked, in 1991, both the political will and the institutional leverage to object. A foundational illegality does not become legal simply because it goes unchallenged — particularly when the organ whose integrity was compromised is the one responsible for adjudicating its own composition.
This point carries an additional dimension of legal weight when considered through the lens of locus standi. Under Article 27(3) of the UN Charter, a party to a dispute is required to abstain from voting on resolutions concerning that dispute under Chapter VI. The principle embedded in this provision — that no state may be the judge in its own cause — reflects one of the oldest maxims of procedural law. Russia’s locus standi to vote on resolutions directly addressing its own acts of aggression is, at minimum, structurally compromised:
A state that obtained its seat through a legally defective transfer cannot invoke that seat to shield itself from the legal consequences of its conduct.
The circularity is total and not accidental.
So, two months after launching its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, a state formally designated by the European Parliament as a “State sponsor of terrorism” presided over the only international body legally authorized to respond to threats against global peace.
The United Nations not only failed to suspend Russia’s veto, but it also handed Russia the rotating presidency.
Serious and repeated violations of the United Nations Charter have produced no structural consequence for Russia’s position within its principal enforcement organ. As the UN demonstrates its incapacity to address this impasse, the burden of preserving a member state’s peace, territorial integrity, and sovereignty has, by default, fallen on defensive coalitions operating outside the UN framework.
This is precisely why Putin persists in the legal fiction of the “Special Military Operation”.
The Kremlin’s calculus is deliberate. A formal declaration of war would have exposed the Russian Federation to a far more constrained legal position within the UN system, significantly amplifying international pressure to suspend or strip a veto that was never legitimately acquired — and removing the shield behind which Russia currently blocks every Security Council resolution aimed at stopping its own crimes.
The veto, obtained through deception and validated by a Soviet diplomat ruling on his own succession, is not merely a diplomatic privilege.
It is the legal architecture of impunity.
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有罪不罰的法律架構：俄羅斯如何竊取其否決權
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻譯：旺財球球
烏克蘭前線報道
我決定逐步將本文這樣一年前發表的文章從付費牆中解鎖出來，以證明其內容的正確性和現實緊迫性。
烏克蘭利沃夫 — 是誰把蘇聯在聯合國安理會的席位——連同一個法律上它從未被賦予的否決權——交給了俄羅斯？
這一答案被幾十年的外交惰性掩埋，既令人震驚又令人憤慨。但要完全理解這一切，我們需要回到起點。
（圖：一張1955年蘇聯的原版海報）
2022年4月，俄羅斯聯邦出任聯合國安理會輪值主席。此事發生在其發動對烏克蘭全麵入侵兩個月之後——這一入侵行動建立在長達十年漸進式的侵略與反人類罪行之上，嚴重到足以讓歐洲議會將俄羅斯認定為“支持恐怖主義的國家”。盡管有此認定，俄羅斯不僅擔任了安理會主席，還繼續行使否決權，這在國際法框架下引發了根本性的倫理、道德與法律問題。
這怎麽可能？
（圖片插畫來自“IStock by Getty Images”）
蘇維埃社會主義共和國聯盟於1922年12月30日成立，由四個創始實體組成：烏克蘭蘇維埃社會主義共和國、白俄羅斯蘇維埃社會主義共和國、外高加索蘇維埃聯邦社會主義共和國和俄羅斯蘇維埃聯邦社會主義共和國。
蘇聯的創始文件確認了各加盟共和國間絕對法律平等的原則，並承認每個共和國有單方麵退出聯盟、並作為主權國家恢複獨立的權利。
隨後亞美尼亞、阿塞拜疆和格魯吉亞加入。二戰後，所有被蘇聯占領的領土——包括愛沙尼亞、立陶宛和拉脫維亞——均被並入蘇聯，加盟共和國總數增至十五個。
在聯盟存在的整個期間，沒有任何創始成員行使其解散1922年條約的權利。
（視頻：Alla與我在帕夫洛格勒記錄了這段影像，俄軍轟炸了那裏蘇聯時代的民用基礎設施——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
1991年12月8日在比亞沃維耶紮簽署的協議，正式確認了蘇聯的解體，並完整重申了創始文件內容，同時作出如下聲明：
“蘇聯，作為國際法上的主體和地緣政治現實，已不複存在。”
這是一次經過一致協商的解體，隨後在同年12月26日由蘇維埃共和國最高委員會予以確認。根據該協議的條款，沒有任何單一國家可以整體繼承前蘇聯的權利和義務。
隻有在一種情形下這種繼承在法律上才是可能的：即一個或多個共和國在聯盟仍然存在時退出——在這種情況下，蘇聯縮小但繼續存續，其國際法人資格保持不變。該機製由蘇聯憲章第72條明確保障。波羅的海三國正是通過這種程序在前一年成功獲得獨立。
俄羅斯與蘇聯是兩個並存了一段時間的不同法律實體。俄羅斯從未被賦予在任何被法律認可的情況下等同於蘇聯的權利。
（視頻：Alla與我在基輔記錄了這段影像，就在俄軍意圖摧毀烏克蘭的建築、曆史與國家性的一次空襲後不久——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
聯合國並未賦予任何自動繼承權，允許一國繼承另一國的會員資格或常任理事國席位。
程序記錄十分明確。
1992年捷克斯洛伐克解體時，捷克共和國和斯洛伐克各自提交了獨立的入會申請。南斯拉夫解體結果亦是如此：波斯尼亞和黑塞哥維那、斯洛文尼亞、克羅地亞與南斯拉夫聯邦共和國各自啟動了單獨的加入程序。至於常被援引為先例的中國案例，其教訓比表麵看起來更具啟發性。中華人民共和國因為“程序性原因”並未等待二十多年才被承認：是美國在安理會上阻撓了對中華人民共和國的承認，利用政治杠杆保留中華民國（台灣）的席位。當這種阻撓最終被打破時，1971年聯合國大會第2758號決議的通過，才正式完成了該席位的移交。
即便是在世界上最強大的政治組織裏，繼承也需要明確的法規——從來不是自動發生的。
其背後的法律框架證實了這一點。
1978年《維也納國家繼承條約公約》——國際法中最接近國家繼承成文規則的文書——並未規定專屬政治地位的自動轉移。
安理會常任理事國席位及其隨附的否決權，並非可由法律效力自動從一個國家至另一個國家轉移的條約義務：它是原始主體固有的屬性，與產生它的法律人格不可分割。當該法律人格不複存在時——如比亞沃維耶紮協議明確宣告的那樣——該屬性亦隨之消失。不存在將其傳遞給所謂的繼承者的法律通道。
（圖：照片插圖來源“Infolifefb”）
在此背景下，1991年12月21日，前蘇聯各共和國領導人簽署了阿拉木圖宣言。以新成立的獨立國家聯合體（CIS）名義會晤——而非已不複存在的蘇聯——他們支持俄羅斯作為獨立國家加入聯合國，遵循獨立的入會程序，而非蘇聯的繼承人。
在法律上，阿拉木圖聲明由一個無權轉移蘇聯國際法人格的實體簽署。
從嚴格意義上說，它作為繼承文書是無效的。
盡管如此，鮑裏斯·葉利欽以此為依據正式請求俄羅斯聯邦繼承蘇聯在安理會的否決權。
而在一件獨特的曆史事件中，聯合國安理會主席接受了該請求。
這位主席是誰？
前蘇聯常駐代表尤利·沃龍佐夫。
生於列寧格勒，卒於莫斯科。他曾任蘇聯駐聯合國最後一任常駐代表（1990–1991），隨後無縫銜接地擔任首任俄羅斯常駐代表（1991–1994）。正是這位剛剛離任的蘇聯席位外交官，負責裁定俄羅斯是否有資格繼承蘇聯該席位，。
他的繼任者是仍在職的瓦西裏·阿列克謝耶維奇·內邊茲亞。
（視頻：Alla與我在烏克蘭頓涅茨克多裏納拍攝了這段影像，俄軍摧毀了當地一座古老修道院——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
為俄羅斯的法律立場辯護者有時援引默許原則：既然當年沒有聯合國成員國正式抗議1991年的轉移，論者認為，國際社會即以默許方式予以追認，而這種沉默隨後固化為慣例。此論點看似誘人，但經不起推敲。
默許或可彌補國際法邊緣上的程序瑕疵，但不能彌補其核心的結構性缺陷。常任席位與否決權並非邊緣特權——它們是安理會執行功能的承重構架，是聯合國憲章所保障的集體安全得以實施或陷入癱瘓的機製。當該機製的受益者本身就是對和平的威脅來源時，如此嚴重的違規不能僅憑時間流逝或當時缺乏政治意願與製度杠杆而未提出異議的國家之沉默，被洗白為合法。一個根本性的非法行為不會因無人抗辯而變為合法，尤其當被破壞完整性的機構正是負責裁定其自身組成的機構時。
（視頻：Alla與我在諾沃格裏霍裏夫卡拍攝了這段影像，俄軍在當地摧毀了那些現在其政權用於自我崇拜的蘇聯時代紀念碑——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
從訴訟資格的角度審視，這一點具有額外的法律分量。根據聯合國憲章第27條第3款，爭端當事國在就該爭端作出決議時，應在第六章框架下回避投票。該條款體現的原則——即無人可作己案之裁判——反映了程序法中最古老的格言之一。俄羅斯對直接涉及其侵略行為的決議行使表決權的訴訟資格，至少在結構上已被削弱：
通過法律瑕疵的轉移取得席位的國家，不得以該席位為庇護，規避其行為所應承擔的法律後果。
這種循環是徹底的且並非偶然。
（視頻：Alla與我在烏克蘭頓涅茨克斯拉維揚斯克拍攝了這段影像，俄軍在當地摧毀了那些其政權現用以自我崇拜的蘇聯時代紀念碑——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
因此，在對烏克蘭發起大規模入侵兩個月後，一個被歐洲議會正式認定為“支持恐怖主義的國家”的政權，主持了唯一有法律權限應對全球和平威脅的國際機構。
聯合國不僅未暫停俄羅斯的否決權，反而將輪值主席交到俄羅斯手中。
對聯合國憲章的嚴重且屢次違反未對俄羅斯在其主要執行機構中的地位帶來任何結構性後果。隨著聯合國在應對這一僵局方麵表現出無能，維護成員國和平、領土完整與主權的重擔，默認地落在了聯合國框架之外運作的防禦聯盟身上。
（圖片插圖作者 Ben9683。原始照片來源“Skymods”）
這正是普京堅持使用“特別軍事行動”這一法律虛構概念的原因。
克裏姆林宮的算計是深謀遠慮的。正式宣戰會使俄羅斯聯邦在聯合國體係內處於更受約束的法律地位，顯著增強國際社會暫停或剝奪那一從未合法獲得的否決權的壓力——同時移除如今俄羅斯用以阻擋每一項旨在製止其自身罪行的安理會決議的保護傘。
通過欺騙取得並由一位審理自身繼承問題的蘇聯外交官予以確認的否決權，不僅僅是一個外交特權。
它是有罪不罰的法律架構。
***
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