On June 24, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will vote on a resolution which will severely limit the continent’s largest human rights organization to sanction its violating member states. It’s an open secret that the resolution is being pushed through to accommodate Russia, whose delegation was sanctioned from participating in PACE after the country occupied Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and stirred up a war in Donbas in 2014. Over the three years that Russia has been trying to get reinstated in PACE, it has pursued different narratives. And it seems that the one of repeated threats to leave the Council of Europe altogether is what broke the camel’s back. But is there any substance behind the threats? And would unilaterally admitting Russia back to PACE really help dialogue and the promotion of human rights, as Russia’s advocates insist?
Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Alya Shandra: How Russia tricked the Council of Europe into self-amputation
General view of the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg, eastern France, on Jan. 26, 2011.
