Russia's War Against Ukraine OP-ED

Pavel K. Baev: Russia makes haste in severing ties with Europe

By Pavel K. Baev.

Published Feb. 3, 2015 at 1:09 am

Russia's State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin gives a press conference, on January 25, 2015, after a meeting with Luxemburg's Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, eastern France. At its April 2014 session PACE stripped the Russian delegation of the right to vote until January 2015 and excluded it from all Assembly's management bodies for Crimea's reunification with Russia. Naryshkin and Brasseur discussed the report of the resolution for one more year. AFP PHOTO / PATRICK HERTZOG

Photo by AFP

Russia has achieved much success last week in its rush toward self-isolation, and perhaps the most demonstrative step was made in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Sergei Naryshkin, the Chairman of the State Duma, came to Strasbourg as the head of the Russian delegation expecting to reach a compromise on the issue of restoring Russia’s full participation in this important pan-European forum. But he was so irked by the international body’s decision to prolong its sanctions against Russia (including the suspension of the right to vote) for another three months that he stormed out of the Palace of Europe and announced that his country would abstain from partaking in the PACE proceedings until the end of 2015 (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, January 30).

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