Ukrainian UN Ambassador asks who voted for newly formed Russia to be admitted to UN

[crickets]

36. Interesting, thanks. They'd have a better argument if they could find their own paperwork.

According to the entry quoted, there were questions about the legitimacy of the Belovezh Accords at the time. Also, seems there's plenty of dog-ate-my-homework missing documentation to go around in this situation.

The Telegraph (I know, but it had the most text) Feb 2013, no paywall: https://archive.ph/mppXQ
Document proclaiming death of Soviet Union missing

Stanislav Shushkevich, the former leader of Belarus, told The Daily Telegraph that the Belavezha Accords — the agreement which sounded the death knell of the USSR in 1991 – had disappeared from state archives.

The accords were signed by Mr Shushkevich, Russia’s president Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine’s president Leonid Kravchuk in a hunting lodge in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha nature reserve in western Belarus.

It has often been rumoured that the trio were under the influence of alcohol at the time they signed the document which brought down the vast Soviet empire, although Mr Shushkevich has since denied they were drunk.

In a telephone interview, the former Belarus leader said he had requested to see the original document as he prepared to write his memoirs. “The last time I saw it was when I put my signature on it,” said Mr Shushkevich. “I wrote to the foreign ministry where it should be archived but they sent a polite reply saying they don’t have a copy in Belarusian. And then it transpired that they don’t have the original in Russian either. It’s not there.”

I have no expertise in any kind of law either, but I find the whole situation curiouser and curiouser.