PACE delegation halts Ukraine visit after speaker withdraws invitation

A delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe to monitor Ukraine’s parliamentary elections announced on
July 3 it is pre-emptively halting its mission a day after Parliamentary
Speaker Andriy Parubiy canceled Ukraine’s invitation to PACE to observe. The
mission – led by parliamentarian Mart van de Ven of the Netherlands – began on
July 2 to meet with the leaders of Ukrainian parties, representatives of civil
society and mass media, and election observers of the ODIHR/OSCE. All other meetings
were canceled, the eurointegration.com.ua news site reported.

Speaker Parubiy signed a July 2 resolution canceling
Ukraine’s invitation to PACE to observe the July 21 parliamentary elections
after the international body decided to renew Russia’s activity, including
participation and voting rights. In her response in a July 3 statement, PACE
President Liliane Maury Pasquier expressed regret with the resolution, the
eurointegration.com.ua news site said. She pointed out that PACE has observed
Ukraine’s elections since 1994, which helped to substantially improve
legislation and election practices. “I should stress that Ukraine, as a Council
of Europe member, is under PACE monitoring and is obligated to ask PACE to
observe its presidential and parliamentary elections,” she wrote.

Zenon Zawada: We expected
the Ukrainian delegation would take a pragmatic approach and remain in PACE in
order to continue the hard work of combatting the Russian lobby and propaganda
on the war in Donbas. Instead, the delegation launched a demarche by announcing
on June 25 that it is ceasing its activity. We expected the Ukrainians to
recognize that Russia is a giant geopolitical player that the Europeans don’t
want to antagonize when it’s avoidable, and Ukraine simply doesn’t command the
same influence. But besides taking a moral stand, we can’t rule out that that
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party is grandstanding for the July 21
parliamentary elections, which we view as playing with fire with Ukraine’s
relations with Europe.

It’s not clear how far the current Ukrainian
leadership (loyal to former President Poroshenko) will take its summertime PACE
demarche. Dmytro Razumkov, the head of The People’s Servant party, has criticized
this campaign, characterizing it as not constructive and inexpedient, a
position we agree with. The demarche will end once a parliamentary majority –
loyal to President Zelensky – emerges in September, and elects a new Cabinet,
which should occur that month, or October the latest.