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After mounting pressure on Moscow to be ejected from the pan-European rights council over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia said Tuesday that it would withdraw from the Council of Europe.
The Russian foreign ministry claimed it had notified Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric of its resignation, effectively jumping before it was pushed out of the Strasbourg-based body.
The decision ends Russia’s quarter-century membership in the Council of Europe (COE) and allows Moscow to reinstate the death penalty if it so chooses.
Russia will no longer be a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, and its citizens will no longer be allowed to file applications with the European Court of Human Rights as a result of the so-called “Ruxit” from the Council of Europe (ECHR).
After Greece’s temporary withdrawal from the Council of Europe in the late 1960s, this is only the second occasion in the body’s history that a member state has indicated its intention to leave.
A day after tens of thousands of troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russia was stripped of all representational rights.
In a statement, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, the president of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, Tiny Kox, and the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejcinovic Buric, said, “As leaders of the Council of Europe, we expressed our firm condemnation of the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine on several occasions.”
Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, asked on Monday that Russia be ejected immediately, claiming that the country has no right to remain a member after deploying troops to the pro-Western country.
The death penalty is on the table.
On its Telegram account, the Russian foreign ministry announced the “starting of the procedure to depart the Council of Europe,” adding that it had “no regrets” about leaving.
Russia became a member of the Council of Europe in 1996.
The ministry stated that its leave would “not impair Russian citizens’ rights and freedoms” and that “the execution of already adopted European Court of Human Rights resolutions would continue, if they do not contradict Russia’s Constitution.”
It alleged that inside the Council of Europe, EU and NATO member states had converted the organisation into a “instrument for anti-Russian activities.”
The withdrawal of Russia will be a significant move for the ECHR, which operates as a court of last resort after all domestic options have been exhausted.
Russian citizens’ cases have piled up before the ECHR, accounting for 24% of the current proceedings, including those involving dissident prisoner Alexei Navalny.
The Council of Europe, which was founded in 1949 and currently has 47 members, including Russia, has never had a member state removed.
Moscow’s approach has precedent: Greece walked out of the body in 1969 to avoid expulsion when it was ruled by the military. Following the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974, Athens re-joined.
The use of the death penalty is a condition of COE membership, and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy national security council chief, has said that if Russia leaves the group, the death sentence should be reinstated.
“A excellent chance to reestablish a number of critical measures to prevent very heinous crimes — such as the death sentence… which is actively employed in the United States and China,” Medvedev said of Russia’s suspension.
Since 1996, Russia has had a moratorium on the death sentence, however the practise has never been formally banned.
Belarus, the only European country currently using the death sentence and a close ally of Russia, is not a member of the group.
The COE will lose about 7% of its yearly funding, or around 500 million euros ($545 million), if Russia withdraws.
However, Buric told AFP earlier this month that she had received “reassuring” signals from a number of member nations, notably France and Germany, that they were willing to ensure the organization’s financial viability.
