The organization’s headquarters should be in the Russian resort city of Sochi, the top diplomat has said
The United Nations headquarters should be moved from New York to the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested.
The UN headquarters – the seat of both the Security Council (UNSC) and the General Assembly (UNGA) – have been in midtown Manhattan since 1951, having been moved there not long after the organization’s founding in 1945.
“The best thing would be to move the UN to Sochi,” Lavrov said during the ‘Forum of the Future 2050’ in Moscow on Monday.
“[Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin, by the way, suggested this, and seriously suggested it. But then he yielded to [US President Franklin] Roosevelt – first Long Island, then New York, Manhattan,” the top diplomat said.
However, he admitted such a change would be extremely hard to realize.
“All these structures have grown deep roots,” both in terms of real estate and “in the form of personnel,” Lavrov said. “Especially after permanent contracts were introduced, the personnel bought apartments, houses.”
A sudden shift would be “scary to even imagine,” he added.
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Lavrov had previously referred to Stalin’s suggestion in the wake of a diplomatic scandal in which Washington denied visas to a senior Russian diplomatic delegation ahead of a UNGA session in 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidency.
Russia is one of five permanent members of the UNSC, alongside China, the US, the UK and France. All five have the power to veto any resolution put before the council. The ten non-permanent members are elected by the UNGA to serve two-year terms.
Moscow has argued for the expansion of the roster.
India, Brazil and the representatives of Africa should have joined the UNSC as permanent members “a long time” ago, Lavrov said.
“This is necessary to ensure representativeness, the representation of the world majority,” Lavrov said last year, arguing that Western nations are over-represented at the UN.
