THERE’S only one truly human response to Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine: rage. But what does rage become, where does it go? Often rage shape-shifts into revenge. Dark thoughts about ‘what Russia deserves’ for its crimes, have passed through many of our minds. Evidently, though, to exact revenge on ‘Russia’ would be to punish millions of innocent Russians who don’t support Putin. When a murderer takes a life, we don’t lock up their family, unless of course some relatives abetted the crime … that’s a different matter.

So what do we do with our rage; how to prevent it sapping our own humanity and encouraging us into acts neither decent nor just? How do we take righteous anger and fashion something positive out of such destructive emotions?

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is fashioning an answer – he is, after all, a man innately in tune with much of world’s emotional mood, as proven time and again by his targeted video addresses picking up on the national narratives of the country he’s speaking to: Churchill for Britain; Pearl Harbour for America.

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Zelensky’s answer is as beautifully simple as the most elegant mathematical formulae: we must reshape how we run the planet in the interests of peace. In his address to the United Nations, Zelensky struck at the very heart of the problem which has plagued the pursuit of peace since 1945: the UN Security Council.

“It’s obvious,” he said, “that the key institution of the world designed to combat aggression, and ensure peace, cannot work effectively.” Zelensky reminded the UN that Article One of Chapter One of its own founding charter states that the purpose of the United Nations “is to maintain and make sure that world peace is adhered to. And now the UN charter is violated literally starting with Article One. And so what is the point of all the other articles?”

In a UN fit for purpose, Russia would be removed from the Security Council – where it sits as one of the permanent Big Five: the winners of the Second World War with absolute power of veto. However, in a bureaucratic mangle that would make Kafka smile and Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol proud, Russia cannot be removed because Russia would need to vote for its own expulsion. Failure is inbuilt – so no wonder the UN has failed and failed again.

It failed to stop Britain and America’s criminal invasion of Iraq, it failed to stop the horror in Yemen and Syria, it failed to stop genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia. What is the purpose of the UN? Ukraine is now living with the consequences of indolence by generations of political leaders.

There’s paths that can be taken to shame Russia at the UN, if not remove it from the Security Council. On Tuesday, the UN’s own news service pointed to Chapter 18 of the charter, which explains how amendments can be made to United Nations’ rules. With the support of two-thirds of the General Assembly and “any nine members of the Security Council” (there’s 15, including the five permanents), a “general conference” can be held “for the purpose of reviewing the present charter”. That would pave the way for an amendment to be proposed – though, of course, the amendment would be vetoed by Russia. Nevertheless, a statement would have been made: ‘You're a pariah, we don’t want you, and you’re only here on sufferance because the rules don’t allow us to expel you.’

An easier move would be to kick Russia off the UN Human Rights Council – any suspension simply needs a two-thirds majority.

Nevertheless, even if this tortuous diplomatic prestidigitation was pursued, such muted gestures would do nothing for peace let alone Ukraine.

Is it beyond human wit or imagination for the world’s nations to find a way through this tangled, absurd, amoral bureaucracy? In changing times, sometimes rules need changed. A way should be found not just to remove Russia from the Security Council but from the UN itself. There’s been mutterings that as Russia inherited the old UN seat held by the USSR a case could be made that its membership is null and void.

If we don’t find a way to make peace paramount, then rage will only take us further toward war. Britain is understandably, though depressingly, now researching hypersonic missiles – a weapon already used by Moscow.

The League of Nations died because it failed to stop World War Two. The League finally tried to get its act together in December 1939 when it expelled the USSR over its invasion of Finland. By then, it was far too late and we were on a path to mass murder across the planet.

Our recent political leaders have done nothing to make the world safer. Cameron, Sarkozy, Merkel, Obama, they presided over the 2010s, a decade of nothingness. Today, they’re all wealthy and safe and out of office – and it’s us who must pick up the pieces they left scattered on the floor.

There’s good people trying hard right now to make the world a better place. Today, 60 nations are meeting, under UN auspices, in Geneva to push for a prohibition on military bombing of urban areas. Iain Overton, of the charity Action on Armed Violence, which is taking part, told me: “When explosive weapons are used in towns and cities, 90% of those killed or injured have been civilians. As in Ukraine, as in Afghanistan, as in Yemen, as in Syria. These efforts at the UN are one small way to address this global harm”.

The SNP’s Defence Spokesman Stewart McDonald MP is also attending, thankfully adding Scotland’s voice to calls for a better world. He told delegates: “At a time when the international order designed to keep us free and at peace is under unprecedented assault and strain, those of us who believe in that order must continue to give it the new life it needs to succeed.”

If rage isn’t to turn to revenge, and if international diplomacy is to survive, then the UN needs ‘new life’; it must reform, and reform is needed now. Ukraine cannot wait. Either Russia is broken at the UN or the UN breaks itself.

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