Since the formation of the United Nations and its Security Council, the Soviet Union was the State that blocked the most number of resolutions by exercising its veto power. After the Soviet dissolution in 1991, the Russian Federation received a perman...
Since the formation of the United Nations and its Security Council, the Soviet Union was the State that blocked the most number of resolutions by exercising its veto power. After the Soviet dissolution in 1991, the Russian Federation received a permanent seat in the UNSC as its successor and from that moment, the number of vetoes started to decline dramatically. However, in 2006 the number of vetoes started to increase again compared to previous years. This raised questions. There is a two-fold explanation to this increase and decrease during specific periods of time. The logic behind the Russian Federation’s use of the veto consists of two parts: on the one hand, it tries to take responsibility as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to sustain international peace and security. Russia promotes its own place in the international arena by promoting state sovereignty norms; while on the other hand, Russia tries to mitigate threats to its own national interests by defending its foreign policy.
This research paper explores voting practices of the permanent members in the UN Security Council for the period of its existence. It describes the theoretical bases of the veto applying to draft resolutions and integrates it with real cases of veto voting in the UNSC. It also includes an analysis of 12 vetoed draft resolutions by the Russian Federation for the past twenty years and searches for motivations for Russian voting behavior from 1996-2016. These analyses will show that the Russian voting pattern has been motivated to promote not only its own perceived state sovereign norms but also state sovereignty norms of the UNSC.