Lavrov Tells UN The Dictatorship Of A Single Hegemon Has Run Amok As Russia Launches A Eurasian Multipolarity Charter
UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 10 Of 15
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| File Photo Via: @mfa_russia on X |
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the General Debate on Saturday, September 26, that delegates had heard repeatedly, from the rostrum and in the corridors, that tectonic shifts were under way and that "a more just, multipolar world order is emerging before our very eyes". Countries of the Global South and East, he said, were asserting themselves as sovereign centres of growth and taking responsibility for security in their own regions.
Quoting President Vladimir Putin, he said "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok and is simply dangerous for everyone around it."
The rest of the speech amounted to a charge sheet against the West. The "Western minority", which he said had dominated for five centuries by exploiting the resources of others, was trying to keep its privileges and impose its "rules" on everyone else.
He cited the US operation in Venezuela in January that ended in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and their detention in the United States, and demanded their immediate release. He called the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with members of his family and the country's military and political leadership, "another unacceptable manifestation of coercive diktat", and said strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards had done "irreparable damage" to the non-proliferation system. He also repeated Moscow's call for the tightened US blockade of Cuba to be lifted.
On Ukraine he gave no ground. He accused European governments of arming Kyiv and obstructing peace talks, and said the objectives of Moscow's "special military operation" would be achieved. Before his speech, he met German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on the sidelines.
What set this year's address apart was an attempt to turn rhetoric into structure. Lavrov announced that Russia, Belarus and "like-minded partners" had adopted a statement in New York launching work on a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century, which he pitched as the basis for "a new continent-wide architecture of peace and development". He had co-chaired the launch meeting on September 25 with Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov. Participants were Belarus, Vietnam, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Myanmar, Russia and Tajikistan.
On the Security Council, Lavrov said reform should not create permanent seats for Germany or Japan, which he accused of militarisation and revanchism, but that Russia supported permanent seats for Brazil and India along with greater African representation. He accused NATO of extending its reach into Southeast and Northeast Asia.
For Moscow, the question is no longer whether the world is multipolar but who writes its rules. The charter's first round drew nine states, three of them, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, fellow members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The national statements delivered at this year's UN General Assembly left little doubt about how far the ground has shifted. Opening the debate, Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders that "we are clearly moving towards a multipolar world" and that the movement is irreversible, though he warned it could take the shape of fragmentation and transactionalism rather than a networked order rooted in international law. The backdrop was hard to miss: a US-Israeli war with Iran nearly seven months old, the US capture of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro in January, and a US President who used the same podium to say he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" it. Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the World Trade Organization was on life support and condemned the use of tariffs as "a weapon of coercion and blackmail", while India's S. Jaishankar declared that the post-1945 order is giving way to new realities. Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Spain's Pedro Sánchez, from very different vantage points, both called for an end to the veto held by the Security Council's five permanent members. Russia's Sergey Lavrov went further, telling the Assembly that "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok" and that a fairer, multipolar order was emerging. What remains unsettled is not whether power is spreading, but whether the institutions built in 1945 can adjust fast enough to hold it together.