Estonia to assume UNSC presidency

Estonia will assume the presidency of the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) today; its term will last through the month of June.

Estonia last held the rotating UNSC presidency in May 2020. Last week, the Estonian mission to the UN announced that, as in 2020, protecting digital infrastructure from cyberattacks will be one of its foremost priorities. To this end, Estonia has scheduled a UNSC ministerial meeting on cybersecurity for June.

Expect the Estonian delegation to use the Council presidency to press the UN to sanction states which utilize cyberattacks to target critical political and military infrastructure. Any sanctions regime initiated under an Estonian Council presidency will likely be viewed as an attempt to address cyberattacks from Russia, a permanent UNSC member and alleged cyber aggressor. Russia’s UN delegation is nevertheless unlikely to dismiss the body’s cybersecurity concerns outright. Attributing cyberattacks to their perpetrators is a technically complex process, requiring capabilities many states lack, and formal accusations of state involvement in such attacks remain relatively rare. As such, though Russia may back a proposal to enact UN sanctions in rare instances where attacks can be clearly attributed to state actors, such a proposal would ultimately be of limited use.