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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's video message to participants of a solemn meeting dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, Moscow, October 23, 2025

23 October 2025 19:28
1765-23-10-2025

Friends,

This year, the international community marks a significant date, the 80th anniversary of the UN. For a multilateral organisation, an anniversary is an excellent opportunity to not only look back at the past performance, but to outline plans as well. The UN is no exception.

The UN was originally created as a centre for coordinating and balancing the interests of states whenever an international response was required. The UN Charter, which remains the key source of international law, enshrines the fundamental rules of relations between the states, including the principles of the sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, and the right of nations to self-determination.

Eight decades later, we can safely say that this global organisation created following the most horrific of wars fulfilled its crucial mission and saved the world from another devastating conflict of global proportions. Moreover, the UN has demonstrated a remarkable resilience amid the differences setting the world's leading powers apart.

Although the Organisation is facing a crisis in its attempts to maintain international peace and security, I choose not to be entirely pessimistic as we mark this anniversary. The ongoing restructuring of the global economy and politics towards multipolarity, the growing influence of the World Majority, and the steady increase in the number of the countries that recognise the value of state sovereignty and the importance of protecting it from neocolonial encroachment inspire hope that things will gradually improve over time.

It has long been clear, though, that the UN, which was founded 80 years ago amid the geopolitical circumstances that were drastically different from today's, no longer reflects the international balance of power in full and is in need of a reform. Russia advocates an approach that implies greater role and weight of the Global South and the Global East in the UN bodies, including the Security Council which is the most important of them.

When considering modernisation of the Organisation, it is important to focus on its Secretariat which is heavily overrepresented by the collective West which often ignores the principle of impartiality and takes advantage of the administrative resources to brazenly advance its national approaches, thereby violating Article 100 of the Charter which requires all UN Secretariat officials to remain neutral. This approach should not go unnoticed or unpunished. We will ensure that the new Secretary-General to be elected in 2026 devotes much more attention to this issue.

In the face of the challenges posed by the new historical era, Russia is prepared to work together in an honest manner to unlock the creative potential of the UN based on the conscientious observance by all states of the principles of the Charter laid down by the founding fathers as an indivisible and interdependent whole.