Editor’s Note: Russia’s two-year battle to lift sanctions imposed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for its occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and war in Donbas and return to the Assembly as a full-fledged member finished triumphantly in June 2019. Then, PACE voted to destroy its existing sanctions mechanism. At the January 2020 PACE session, the Ukrainian delegation was unable to reinstate sanctions against Russia. Moreover, Russian Petr Tolstoi was chosen as PACE vice-president, and Ukraine’s amendments for the new sanctions mechanism were repealed. Serhiy Sydorenko, editor of the Ukrainian online media outlet European Pravda, explained whether PACE will now have any possibilities for punishing violators, and who will be affected by the new rules. Here is an adapted translation of his article.
On Feb. 5, the Council of Europe announced that it was finally ready to punish the worst offenders. The Committee of Ministers of the CoE, the governing body of the organization comprising the ambassadors of its 47 Member States, decided on a new procedure for responding “to serious violations by a member State of its statutory obligations.”
