NEW YORK, SEP 23: European Council President Charles Michel said on Friday that Russia should be suspended from the United Nations Security Council. “When a permanent member of the Security Council launches an unprovoked and unjustifiable war, a war which is condemned by the General Assembly, that member’s suspension from the Security Council, in my view, should be automatic,” Michel said, referring to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“The use of the right to veto should be an exemption but it has become, we have seen it, the rule. A reform is needed and urgent,” Michel said, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The UN Security Council’s five permanent members – China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia – have a right to veto resolutions.

The Security Council is the UN’s most powerful organ as its resolutions are binding for member countries. Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly demanded that Russia lose its veto right as long as it wages war.