How Russia votes at the UN

Which countries vote with Russia at the UN?

Russia's closest voting partners in 2025 were North Korea (95%), Bolivia (94%), Eswatini (92%), Grenada and Syria (90%). Russia belongs to neither the Group of 77 (the UN's main bloc of developing countries) nor the Non-Aligned Movement (about 120 states that stayed out of the Cold War blocs), so it builds coalitions vote by vote. Its 2023 Foreign Policy Concept makes "multipolarity" Russia's goal and calls the United States "the source of fundamental risks to the security of the Russian Federation."

Russia's agreement with the United Kingdom rose from 47% in 2024 to 72% in 2025. That year the United States called recorded votes on many texts that used to pass without one and voted no on them, often alone. Recorded votes doubled, from 95 to 192, and on 43 of them the United States was the only no. Russia voted yes on 37 of those and abstained on six. On some nuclear weapons texts, such as the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons (135-11-33), Russia votes no alongside the United States, United Kingdom and France. In 2025 it was the only no on the high-seas biodiversity agreement (168-1-1).

How has the vote on Ukraine changed?

On March 2, 2022, the first resolution after the invasion passed 141-5-35. Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria joined Russia in voting no. China and India abstained. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the text "will not help to end the military operations" and "could embolden Kyiv's radicals and nationalists." During the debate, Ukraine's ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said: "If Ukraine does not survive, international peace will not survive. If Ukraine does not survive, the United Nations will not survive."

On February 24, 2025, 18 countries voted no on a resolution for a just and lasting peace, among them Israel, Hungary and the United States, which had put forward its own text. Syria, after the fall of Assad, abstained. The same day, Russia voted for the United States text in the Security Council but against the Assembly version, which European amendments had changed. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Russia voted no because its amendment on the "root causes" of the conflict was left out and that European amendments had "completely distorted" the text.

In December 2025 a resolution on the return of Ukrainian children passed 91-12-57. In February 2026 the resolution "Support for lasting peace in Ukraine," which called for a ceasefire and reaffirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity, passed 107-12-51. The United States abstained.

Why does Russia's resolution on Nazism split the Assembly?

Every year Russia presents a resolution against the glorification of Nazism and racism. The United States and Ukraine voted against it before 2022. The United States said it "calls for unacceptable limits on the fundamental freedom of expression." Since 2022, most Western states have also voted no, saying Russia uses it to justify its invasion of Ukraine. In 2021 the resolution passed 130-2-49. In 2022 it passed 120-50-10. In 2025 it passed 119-51-10. The EU said in 2025: "There is something wrong in claiming to combat nationalism by denying the existence of a sovereign people."

In 2024 and again in 2025, amendments proposed by Ukraine, Japan, Australia and others added a paragraph saying that using neo-Nazism as a pretext for Russia's invasion undermines real efforts against it. Russia urged states to vote against the amendment but voted for the amended resolution, which passed 119-51-10.