Russia May Leave Council of Europe, Moscow’s Representative Says – Costing Russians ‘Court of Last Resort’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – In the latest example of Moscow’s brinksmanship, its representative to the Council of Europe, Ivan Soltanovsky, says that Russia may leave the body if the latter doesn’t “compromise” with Moscow. The Russian Federation in fact under Council rules is slated to be dropped at the end of this year for non-payment of dues since 2017.

            The Russian representative says that being a member of the Council has been useful to Russia modernizing its legal system, but he adds that the group is now “not in the best situation” because members are whittling away at “the principle of sovereign equality of sates and using it for selfish goals (vesti.ru/doc.html?id=3144194).

            In fact, what Moscow objects to is that the Council now as it has throughout its 70 years of existence upholds the principles of democracy and freedom, things the current Russian government is less than fully committed to, and is the sponsor of the European Court of Human Rights which serves as the court of last resort for Russians and often rules against the Kremlin. 

            Opposition politician Gennady Gudkov notes that this possibility has attracted little notice in the Russian media, “but in fact, it is the main news of the day” as it represents “the final return of the country to the shameful slavish past” and “the end of the survivals of human rights” in Russia (echo.msk.ru/blog/gudkov/2420477-echo/).

            Moreover, he continues, it is “the logical completion of the process of the transformation by Putin’s regime of the courts, investigators, and procuracy into a political machine of repression and jails into a new edition of the GULAG with tortures and abuses.”  Such a transition affects everyone in Russia even if not everyone recognizes it.

            “The exit of Russia from the Council of Europe and the jurisdiction of international organizations is an escalation of the self-isolation of the country and its actual preparation for military confrontation with the entire civilized world and a rejection from the basic principles on which the entire progressive world stands,” Gudkov says.

            According to the opposition figure, “Russia is in a deep systemic crisis, the exit from is practically inevitable but not without serious conflicts, numerous victims, and the throwing the country back along the road of world development. But this will not be tomorrow: serious political processes at times lag far behind.”

            Moscow’s troubles with the Council of Europe are not new, Yekaterinburg commentator Fyodor Krasheninnikov notes on the anniversary of that body’s founding in London on May 5, 1949.  As he points out, “this was the first structure of post-war Europe called to work for uniting the continent around the principles of democracy, freedom and unqualified respect for human rights” (dw.com/ru/комментарий-зачем-россии-нужен-совет-европы/a-48562339).

            “Many considered,” he continues, “that the fall of the iron curtain had resolved all the political problems of Europe.  But it has faced new challenges and tests. And on its 70^th anniversary, the Council of Europe again has turned out to be at the avant garde of the struggle for European values and freedoms.”

            The Soviet government viewed it as a hostile organization. And Russia joined only on February 28, 1996. Both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin at first used membership to promote Moscow’s position and to signal that Russia is part of Europe. But since Putin’s Munich speech in 2007 and its Anschluss of Crimea in 2014, it has not fit in to the organization’s values.

Indeed, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian delegation has not had a vote in the Council.  But as angry as it is about the Council’s declarations and the use of Russian citizens of the European Court for Human Rights, Moscow has at least two reasons for not wanting to withdraw, Krasheninnikov argues.

On the one hand, the Russian government for all its complains welcomes the possibility of being in an institution where it can present its own views and talk to others, especially at a time of international isolation. And on the other, Moscow welcomes the chance to send people to work abroad in places of its greatest strategic interests. 

The big losers of a Russian withdrawal would be Russian citizens, especially at a time “when the Russian judicial system is being used for the persecution of the opposition.” Unfortunately, the prospects that this is about to change are extremely remote, the commentator says.

“Sometime in the future, a time will come when citizens of Russia will be able to turn to local, regional or federal judicial organs and find justice and the defense of their rights and Russia will be represented in the Council of Europe by deputies chosen in free and fair elections,” he continues.

But for the present, “the European Court of Human Rights remains the instance of last hope for many of our fellow citizens, and the Council of Europe an organization membership in which creates certain conditions for the struggle against arbitrariness and the diminution of human rights in Russia.”

            What may be especially tragic is that those are the very reasons Putin and his regime may want to take the country they now control out of these institutions.