Ahead of the G20 summit, the UN Secretary General A. Guterres appealed to G20 leaders to lift the sanctions imposed on some of states, as they may interfere with the delivery of provisions and medical assistance as part of the fight against Covid-19. As the UN Secretary General emphasized, this is a time for solidarity, not for isolation.
At the same time, the emphasis on solidarity should not lead the world community to the obliterated memory of various wars and crimes, of the victims and initiators of these tragedies, which caused the imposition of certain sanctions. If we condemn to oblivion those criminals and executioners who unleashed conflicts and took the lives of many people in our attempt to “make the fresh start” to fight against pandemic together, this may have unpredictable effect. We can wake up tomorrow in a world protected from the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses, but defenseless in face of cunning, cynicism and arbitrariness at the international level. By all means, fight against the pandemic is easily and more properly by putting joint efforts, rather than by individual local capacities of the national governments. However, the only precondition for this is declaring “yes” to solidarity and “no” to amnesia! That is why we may say for sure that Guterres too hurried up to call for lifting of sanctions and, apparently, he thought poorly the logical consequences of his words.
Generally, we should understand that sanctions are not just a kind of rubber hose applied to the hooligan’s hands. First of all, that is a certain message sent by one of the world influence centers (UN, G7, USA, EU) to the whole international community signifying about a very serious problem somewhere!
That is, the US President Trump, by imposing sanctions against companies laying the Nord Stream-2 and TurkStream pipelines, did not intend to inflict losses on corresponding construction firms. He stressed on the fact that the Russian authorities consider the export of its energy products as a kind of “energy weapon”. And, for example, representatives of the Russian civil society have been seeking for five years now the adoption of the so-called “Nemtsov Act” by Western governments. The Russian opposition leader B. Nemtsov (who was killed probably with Kremlin’s knowledge in 2015) helped the US departments to make a list of Russian corrupt officials and law enforcement officers for the Magnitsky Act, and later suggested the West those who should be included in the “black lists” due to the annexation of Crimea. Today it is proposed to make the so-called Nemtsov Act, which would provide for a sanctions regime against the dirty Russian money, as well as against those who facilitate the flow of illegal money into the international financial system. Again, the primary objective of the Magnitsky Act (and potentially the Nemtsov Act) is not imposing restrictions on certain companies and names, but exclaiming loudly and clearly to the whole world that Russia does not hold fair elections, there is total corruption instead.
Overall we should keep in mind that for a long now UN is not an organization capable of quickly responding and effectively resolving crisis situations. One of the main reasons for such a status quo is the clinch in the UN Security Council, where, as a rule, the United States, Great Britain and France stand on the one hand, and Russia and China, most often abstaining, act on the other hand (all of them have the veto right). This stalemate in the UN Security Council prevent putting an end to many conflicts, though, in fact, this situation could well be rectified.
Today, the UN abbreviation became familiar for everyone, however, a lot of people have forgotten that the UN establishment became the second attempt to organise the activities of an international organization meant to ensure peace on the planet. The first was in 1919, at the Paris Conference, when the victorious powers in the World War I founded the League of Nations to ensure collective security, prevent hostilities and resolve disputes between the states through diplomatic negotiations (63 states were the members altogether). The organization had a Council of the League of Nations, which consisted of four permanent members and four non-permanent, the international court, specialized commissions and committees (this was used later for the UN establishment).
Authoritarian fascist states presenting themselves as enemies of democracy and feeling like black sheeps among other members of the League of Nations, left this organization on their own (Germany and Japan in 1933, Italy in 1937). The most interesting we should remember today — in December 1939, the USSR was expelled from this organization for a military invasion of Finland. First, the Assembly of the League of Nations cast a vote for the resolution, then following the adopted resolution the Council of the League of Nations issued a decision on the expulsion of the Soviet Union from this international organization (despite the fact that the USSR was a permanent member of the Council of the League of Nations since 1934).
In 1946, the League of Nations was disbanded, and all its assets and liabilities were transferred to the UN. Unfortunately, today the UN refuses to act as decisively and justly as its predecessor in 1939, who immediately defended the Finnish state from the USSR aggressor state, which cynically unleashed an aggressive war.
The modern Russia, having declared itself the successor of the totalitarian USSR, has become a permanent member of the UN Security Council since 1991. Taking advantage of the current amorphous condition of this international organization, it carries itself as if it is totally unpunished. In fact, back in the 1990s the UN Security Council had to immediately expel the Russian Federation for military operations against the civilians in the Republic of Ichkeria and ethnic cleansing of the Chechen people during 1994–2000. The UN General Assembly could well have adopted such a resolution, and the four permanent members of the UN Security Council would have made an appropriate decision on its basis. However, this failed to be done.
The second warning light flashed in 2008, when Russia (with its armed forces involvement in the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts since 1992) sent its regular forces (not some peacekeeping forces!) in Georgia. This time the UN Security Council again failed to make any decisions that would have halted the Russian-Georgian war. Only the personal calls of the US president (who promised to bring the U.S. Navy carrier striking group into the Black Sea basin) and the Secretary to the Treasury (who threatened to freeze the financial assets of the Russian leaders in all Western banks) managed to stop the further advance of the Russian tank columns, which had already stayed several kilometers from Tbilisi.
Finally, in 2014, regular units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation occupied the Crimean Peninsula and invaded the southeast of the Ukrainian state. Naturally, being a member of the UN Security Council, Russia keeps successfully blocking any measures stacked against its aggressive neo-imperialist foreign policy.
Today the notion of “solidarity” has become a top term and a main trump card of Kremlin. Russia is in active collaboration with the UN Secretary General (although it focuses on other countries which fell under restrictions), it demonstratively sends medical aid to Italy (although officials of the latter stated that 80% of this aid was useless in the fight against Covid-19), calls G20 leaders to stop settle political accounts (although the Russian military continues shooting in Ukraine and Syria), declares preparedness to any dialogue (although the Kremlin is still denying the fact that the Russian military shot down the civilian MH-17 flight). The global fight against the pandemic is by all means a good cause, however, it seems that UN Secretary General A. Guterres hurried up with the lifting of the sanctions.
