"The UN is to some extent a victim of the kind of global crisis in international relations that we are witnessing today. But the fact that we live in a UN-centric model of the world, and the UN, through its Charter, embodies this multilateralism, is something we do not doubt," Nebenzia said.
Nebenzia recalled the words of former French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabious who said that the world we have today has more and more multipolarity, but less and less multilateralism.
The ambassador also said there is "false multilateralism" in which countries create non-inclusive formats, make decisions, and then try to apply them universally onto everyone.
The United Nations should be saved regardless of how it got altered since the 1990s, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Nebenzia said.
"Earlier, in the 1990s, it seems to me, there was more multilateralism in the sense that the process of agreeing on decisions was of a collective nature. Now the situation has changed. There are attempts to blur the interstate foundations of the UN - because the UN is an interstate organization, not an NGO," Nebenzia said. "But I think that no matter the changes, we must preserve the organization."
Russia took over the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the month of April.
Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was at the UN presiding over Security Council meetings, discussed with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres the importance of further strengthening the central coordinating role of the UN in global politics and promoting "true" multilateralism based on fundamental international legal norms, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Lavrov during remarks at the UN said a multilateral approach is required to resolve the crisis in the Middle East instead of what he called the "destructive" one-sided actions of the US and EU.