Having stripped the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of its rights, PACE President Anne Brasseur then asked State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin for the Russian delegation to participate in the organisation’s June session. Russia has been invited to take part in the session with limited powers. In response, Naryshkin declared the need for the Russian delegation’s rights in PACE to be restored in full as a prerequisite for Russian parliamentarians to resume their work with the organisation. In the meantime, the resultant break in relations with the Council of Europe allows the usefulness of Russia’s participation in this international forum to be examined…

Let us remind ourselves of the recent resolution adopted by PACE on Ukraine, which states that, «none of the arguments used by the Russian Federation to justify its actions hold true to facts and evidence. There was no ultra-right wing takeover of the central government in Kyiv, nor was there any imminent threat to the rights of the ethnic Russian minority in the country, including, or especially, in Crimea». According to Europe, apparently, the severed legs and heads of innocent civilians in Donbass, the demolished hospitals, and the tens of thousands of refugees do not pose a threat to «the ethnic Russian minority». So, is there any need for Russia to continue subjecting itself to humiliation from those who aid and abet war criminals? 

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The Council of Europe was established on 5 May 1949, a month after NATO was set up. The lists of the co-founders of both organisations are almost identical: Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and Italy. The only difference is that the military dimension of the anti-Soviet alliance was headed by the US, and neutral Sweden only joined its humanitarian wing. The idea of setting up the Council of Europe belonged to the creator of the ‘cold war’ concept, Winston Churchill. 

By 14 September 1953, PACE had already adopted a resolution in which the USSR was accused of initiating the ‘cold war’. It turns out it is not that Churchill suggested starting a ‘cold war’ against Russia in his famous Fulton speech, but that Russia was scaring the world with threats of a third world war. Which is exactly the same as the situation in Ukraine. It is not that the West organised and supported a neo-fascist coup in Ukraine, but that Russia carried out «unprovoked military aggression».

With the breakup of the USSR, little changed in the Council of Europe’s attitude toward Russia, with the exception that Boris Yeltsin dragged Russia into the Council of Europe in 1996. After this, various destructive measures were imposed on Russia such as the removal of restrictions for people in possession of state secrets to travel abroad, the loss of the FSB’s investigative functions, and the enabling of international humanitarian organisations to work within Russia. The government was unable to protect not only its state secrets and national security, but also its foreign policy interests. The Council of Europe required Russia to give up categorising some foreign countries as a zone of special interest called the «near abroad». In addition, Russia was obliged to return cultural property received as compensation for the losses it sustained during the Second World War to other countries, which is completely comparable with the indemnities imposed on those countries that capitulated in the war.

Communism died long ago, but the organisation created to combat this mythical «communist threat» still cannot settle its nerves, squaring historical accounts with Russia now rather than the USSR. In the Council of Europe, Russia is always to blame for everything. For the so-called «Holodomor» in Ukraine, for the deportation of Nazi collaborators in Baltic states, for the crimes of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. 

It has long been a bad tradition in PACE to rubber stamp resolutions and reports on racist and xenophobic tendencies in Russia, on the persecution of national minorities and the violations of their rights. The fact that opuses like these are voted for without fail by Baltic States where ethnic Russians are declared to be «non-citizens» and are deprived of their civil rights on the basis of their national origin and language does not seem to trouble the Council of Europe, of course. Russia’s efforts to strengthen state authority are constantly attacked, while any attempts to secure the uninterrupted transit of energy resources to Europe are seen as political pressure. 

In light of the recent resolution on Ukraine, PACE’s position regarding the war in Chechnya merits particular attention. In 2000, PACE stripped the Russian delegation of its right to vote, having previously adopted a number of resolutions and recommendations «on the conflict in Chechnya», which, among other things, required Russia, «To introduce an immediate and complete ceasefire and, in particular, to stop immediately all indiscriminate and disproportionate military action in Chechnya, and to start immediately a political dialogue, without preconditions, with the elected Chechen authorities». The desire to protect human rights in Chechnya, of course, is worthy of high praise, were it not for one thing. There is not a single document in the archives of PACE that requires the rights of the victims of terrorist attacks in Budennovsk, Beslan, Moscow or Novorossiysk to be protected, or a single word in support of Russia. Neither are there any decisions on the deprivation of the French delegation’s voting rights for aggression against the independent state of Mali. Just as today there are no demands for the government of Ukraine to stop immediately, without preconditions, all military action in Donbass and begin talks with the elected authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

It is typical that Russia’s invitation to take part in the PACE session without the right to say a single word in its defence came amid Petro Poroshenko’s invitation to the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Europe is taking no notice of the fascism in Ukraine in the artillery shelling and aerial bombardment of Donbass. Consequently, at his inauguration the new Ukrainian president once again spoke about the unitary structure of Ukraine, the single state language, the lack of alternative in signing an essentially colonial association agreement with the EU, and the need for a security treaty that Ukraine would enter into with the West. Europe is satisfied with all this, so there is no point waiting for PACE to adopt a wrathful resolution on the violation of human rights in Donbass. The Russian delegation is apparently being invited to Strasbourg so that it can be given the latest lesson in «protecting human rights». 

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One could spend a long time citing examples of the Council of Europe’s double standards, but enough have been listed to raise the question: why does Russia need to be a member of the Council of Europe at all? To receive from Strasbourg, as well as defamatory statements about Russian politics, court rulings calling for gay parades to take place in Moscow?

The world’s irreversible transformation into a multipolar world puts reforming the system of international organisations on the agenda. The Western-controlled archaic structures of the ‘cold war’ era such as PACE, which is used exclusively as a tool to put pressure on the global community, need to be replaced with a new and more modern system of international cooperation. A Council of Eurasia would be far more relevant than the Council of Europe, for example. At the same time, increasing Russia’s standing in the world would fully allow the country to let go of outdated Western organisations and contribute to the formation of a system of international relations more responsive to the demands of the modern world.