There's been an ad hoarding at the bottom of the Council of Europe's webpage - probably installed in 2020 to mark its 70th anniversary - boasting that the European Convention on Human Rights protects 700 million people. A hasty edit was made a few years ago to reduce the number down from 830 million.
The CoE was
quick to condemn the Ukrainian War in the harshest terms possible, as a human rights violation and otherwise unjust. This entailed suspending Russia and asking them to leave the CoE on pain of permanent expulsion.
Russia announced its intention to withdraw from the CoE and ECHR on March 15th anyway - but their ECHR withdrawal would only take effect in September 2022, and their CoE withdrawal in April 2023.
The CoE did the legwork on March 16th by throwing Russia out of its body immediately,
and then a bit more besides.Today, the CoE
lists solidarity with Ukraine as its "top priority" (the page is a relative novelty so it's not clear if it was structuring its priorities at all pre-2022; most likely anti-discrimination initiatives or COVID-19 would have been top of the pile back then) and, last Tuesday, it put the Register of Damages for Ukraine into operation - which isn't a compensation mechanism yet but hopes to facilitate compensation for potentially millions of Ukrainian complaintants.
Russia was suspended from a number of other organisations after the war, although it remains a P5 member in good standing. SWIFT is the most obvious example. Russia kept up Chile's time-honoured tradition of throwing away major sporting event hosting rights when it was suspended from FIFA and UEFA; there's been talk about reinstating under-17 teams in UEFA competition specifically but nothing's come of them. It's likely that a return to the CoE would outshadow any other.
There are four ways that the war could go.
It could continue as it's currently going. Sanctions will remain as normal.
Russia could somehow gather the willpower to overthrow the Ukrainian government. For the first time since apartheid, sanctions against a country would be an accepted fact of life. They would most likely be massively expanded and it's unlikely that it would be welcomed back into polite society unless they give Ukraine their independence and properly apologise.
Ukraine could claim victory, whether or not that includes Crimea. It's likely in this event that Russia would be penitent enough to be allowed back into the various institutions it was removed from.
Peace could be negotiated. This is Donald Trump's plank and there have been whispers - all denied - that several European governments have been urging Zelensky to go to the table. I don't see any peace being agreed unless all major parties worldwide think it's a good deal - and I also doubt Ukraine thinks any deal is good at this time, although I'm not ruling out an under-the table pressure campaign later this decade.
But not to escape the point: what avenue is there for Russia to regain enough trust among the Committee of Ministers to return to the Council of Europe? This is a serious question and one which I feel shouldn't be lost amidst the noise of the War thread - this is a long-term, non-military prospect and there's otherwise no example of any nation leaving the CoE in its 75-year history, by choice or force.
Russia would obviously have to show a reasonable commitment to human rights, most likely lasting well beyond Putin. Here are some indicative suggestions of what they could do:
- Abolish the death penalty. This is in fact a prerequisite of CoE membership. There were 47 EHCR signatories pre-War. 45 have ratified Protocol 13, on abolition; Azerbaijan has signed but not ratified, which is not surprising given that their signature in 2023 was the first since Armenia's in 2006. Russia has not touched it at all, to the point that Georgia and Moldova have clarified that they can't be held liable for the death penalty being used in South Ossetia, Abhkazia or Transnistria.
- Ensure that the President cannot arbitrarily appoint and dismiss judges. He (or she) can, under the Constitution, and has been able to since 2020. But disempowerment of any sufficient form would be extra Rule of Law Points.
- Return the children they seized from Ukraine. It is on this matter, and this alone, that Putin and Lvova-Belova are wanted by the ICC (the one in the Netherlands, not the one in the UAE). If that matter gets cleared out of the way, everything else becomes much easier.
- In any occupied territories of Ukraine it manages to keep after the war, maybe try not pressuring the local inhabitants into being "good" Russians. We all know what sort of pressure was applied around the Presidential election.
- Back down on the LGBTQ+ harassment. I imagine this comes only if United Russia's populism leads them to soften up a bit on this, however.
- Pass and enforce a hate crime law. Russia is more diverse than most European nations and I imagine Kadyrov wouldn't be pleased with rigorous enforcement (which would be a positive).
- Allow some future United Russia candidate for President to win on merit against an opposition candidate. There have been major question marks surrounding the handling of 2024.
