Yesterday evening, after Vladimir Putin’s televised address, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and the President of the Parliamentary Assembly each issued a statement condemning the recognition of the “so-called peoples’ republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk by the Russian Federation.
In it, Marija Pejčinović Burić and Tiny Kox denounced the “unilateral violation” of the Minsk agreements and - like Luigi Di Maio, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, in a third statement issued on Tuesday - affirmed their “unwavering support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”.
All call for continued dialogue and a diplomatic approach.
Tiny Kox said that the subject would be on the agenda of the Standing Committee meeting on 11 March.
This includes the Vice-Presidents of the Assembly. Proposed for the post by his national delegation at the opening of the assembly’s plenary in January, Russia’s Piotr Tolstoy was challenged by Latvia’s Krista Baumane. The speech was followed by a call for a vote in which the candidate did not receive a majority of the votes cast. The seat of Vice-President for Russia therefore remains vacant.
Ms Baumane questioned several public statements in which Mr Tolstoy displayed, inter alia, “complete disregard for Council of Europe values” and “questioned the independence and territorial integrity of several Council of Europe members”.
The credentials of the Russian delegation were also contested, but were validated by a vote with a Resolution, in which the Assembly urged the Russian authorities to recall “[its troops] as soon as possible from the Ukrainian frontiers and to stop the escalation of military tension”.
If we add the highly critical report and resolution also adopted in January on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, we can measure the persistence and rise of tensions between the parliamentary assembly and Russia.
A first crisis broke out in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, followed by a suspension of the Russian delegation's voting rights. The latter left Strasbourg in the wake of this event and did not return until 2019. At that time, the Russian Federation paid all its contributions to the Council of Europe budget (€33 million), which it had broken off in 2017. The question of interest on arrears remains unresolved. Still unresolved to date, it is likely to reappear in the tense debates that lie ahead. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)