Russia will support G4, South Africa and Egypt, veto right has to remain unchanged

This week, UN Herald interviewed a delegate of another permanent member of Security Council - Russian Federation. Russian permanent representative to the UN, Ms. Eva Keržič shared Russian position about the ongoing negotiations regarding Security Council reform. Ms. Keržič was one of the signatories of joint statement that P5 states published more than a month ago. In this document Russia supported the idea of increasing membership of Security Council but rejected any idea of changing the current veto structure. We wanted to know what changed since then and what positions that are on the table is Russia supporting.

We are glad to say that we received very straight-forward answers which leads to the observation that Russia has detailed and clear vision about acceptable proposals. Ms. Keržič told us, that Russia is supporting the increase of only permanent members and she believes that the increasing number should be 6 states. These 6 states should be G4 group (Japan, Germany, India, Brazil), South Africa and Egypt. "Any larger increase of member seats would make Security Council not efficient enough and less responsive," she explained their position. In conclusion she added that Russian position is still the same as it was at the time of signing the joint statement.

In the second part she stated that Russia will cooperate the most with "the states that we share the most similar position." According to our informations and assumptions these are the P5, G4 and some of the African group states. Russia was not preparing any working document and is taking rather rigid position regarding the Security Council reform. It looks like that Russia is pretty satisfied with the current structure of the Security Council and its important role in it. Although Russia is recognizing the need for reform, it will certainly not be the initiator of the changes.

Luka Kavčič