Ukraine considers initiating resignation of PACE president

The Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is considering initiating a campaign to force the resignation of the assembly’s president, Pedro Agramunt, for his alleged support for removing sanctions against Russia. “We will act depending on conditions and we have this as an option should events unfold in the worst-case scenario,” Volodymyr Ariev, the head of the Ukrainian delegation, told the eurointegration.com.ua news site on Oct. 11 in Strasbourg. The Ukrainian delegation hasn’t begun any procedures but will be ready to file the legal documents, he said. Initiating a resignation campaign can only begin in January, when the next PACE session convenes and will decide on whether to renew sanctions against Russia.

In his remarks to PACE’s opening session on Oct. 10, Agramunt called for taking steps to enable the Russian delegation to return to participating in the assembly’s activities. While not directly referring to the removal of sanctions in his address, he referred to “moving forward” and initiating discussions to enable Russia to return. The next day, Ukrainian delegate and First Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko accused Agramunt of abandoning the principles of PACE and the European People’s Party, reported eutointegration.com.ua. 

Zenon Zawada: If the situation in Russia and Ukraine doesn’t take any sharp turns and remains the same, we believe the first sanctions could start to be lifted by Western politicians in the second half of 2017. And we’ve already begun to see the first cracks as the Russian government has been confirmed to be conducting an intense lobbying campaign, with the help of the exiled Yanukovych crowd.

The Russian government has played the situation with Ukraine rather well. In dragging out the fighting and hostile measures, it was counting on the West to get exhausted with the conflict, especially when coupled with the Ukrainian government’s resistance to reforms and anti-corruption measures. The Russians have also successfully forced the Ukrainians into the awkward position of not being able to arrange local elections as required by the Minsk Accords.

With the momentum of political trends in his favor, we don’t expect any sharp moves of the part of Russian president Putin, despite the recent hostile gestures. If he keeps the war in Donbas at the current level of fighting – while maintaining the trade embargo and leading his people to withstand the sanctions — he could eventually get the sanctions lifted without having surrendered Crimea, which is his ultimate goal.