Ukraine livid as rights assembly lets Russia return

Ukraine yesterday expressed anger at its Western partners after lawmakers at the Council of Europe agreed to allow Russian representatives back following a five year absence prompted by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
Russian delegates had been stripped of their voting rights in the pan-European rights body in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
Russia’s absence from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) — whose members are MPs drawn from parliaments of Council of Europe member states — had raised questions about its future membership of the rights body.
The decision by lawmakers — taken in a vote in the early yesterday — effectively represented the first crack in the international sanctions that were imposed on Moscow after the Crimean annexation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “disappointed”, recalling how he had discussed the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on his visits to Paris and Berlin last week.
“It’s a pity that our European partners did not listen to us,” Zelensky said, adding he had told the EU’s two most powerful figures that Russia should only return to the assembly when it had fulfilled its demands.
In the vote, one hundred and eighteen members of the Strasbourg-based PACE agreed that Russia could present a delegation, with 62 against.
Kyiv insists there should be no international concessions to Moscow until it hands back Crimea and ends support for separatists in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainian delegates walked out of the assembly’s session.
Delegation chief Volodymyr Ariev said Ukraine decided “to suspend its participation in the work of PACE except issues related to stripping the Russian delegation of its rights”.
He wrote on Facebook that the delegation asked the Ukrainian parliament to “urgently” consider the country’s membership of the assembly.
The move paves the way for Russia to participate today in the election of a new secretary general of the Council of Europe to replace Norway’s Thorbjorn Jagland.
The Council of Europe, which is separate from the European Union, has no binding powers but brings together 47 European states to make recommendations on rights and democracy.
Its key institution is the European Court of Human Rights, to which citizens in member states can appeal if they feel their rights have been infringed.
The Kremlin gave the decision a warm welcome with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing it as “a very positive event”. “PACE cannot fully operate without Russia’s participation,” Peskov added, praising the “victory of common sense” in Strasbourg.
Russia had responded to the loss of voting rights by boycotting the assembly and has since 2017 refused to pay its 33mn euro ($37mn) share of the annual budget of the Council of Europe.
It had even threatened to quit the body altogether if it was not allowed to take part in today’s election, a move that would have prevented Russian citizens from being able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Amelie de Montchalin, France’s secretary of state for European affairs, said “it would be dangerous...to deprive millions of citizens of access to bodies that protect their rights”.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that Russia would pay its debt as soon as the country’s rights at PACE were restored in full.
Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996 under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin in what was seen at the time as a milestone for its integration with Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Despite Ukraine’s objections, many Russian rights activists argue it would be better for everyone — including Ukraine — to have Russia in the Council of Europe.
“If Russia leaves, the Council of Europe would lose the limited levers of influence it currently has,” Yuri Dzhibladze, a prominent rights campaigner, told AFP.
Two candidates are in the running to replace Jagland: Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Didier Reynders and Croatia’s Foreign and European Affairs Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric.