Strasbourg Pie

All the time we were afraid that Ukraine, with its death penalty not rescinded and promises unfulfilled, would at last be asked out of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, which we once entered with so much effort. However, among the Deputies of now almost inoperative Verkhovna Rada, there was the widespread notion that all the same they will not expel us: once they let us in they will not let things come to such a shame, that they are afraid to do it.

Afraid? Incidentally, they may propose to the delegation of Great Russia, the nation of victorious natural gas and oil, to relish their Strasbourg pie in Moscow restaurants. When the PACE delegation was visiting the Russian capital, I was perplexed with how differently the European lawmakers and their Russian interlocutors perceived reality. Vladimir Putin spent several hours with Assembly Chairman Lord Russell-Johnston and his colleagues several hours, teaching his guests the laws of pragmatism. The guests would tell the Acting President something about human rights, about negotiations, and that problems cannot be settled by force. Putin would look at them in surprise, begin to explain something again, but in truth he failed to win over the Members of Parliament. Lord David would continue to insist that Russia’s membership in PACE could be suspended if the war does not end. Meanwhile, the Russian mass media sorted out from the Lord’s statements the idea that Russia is a great country which cannot be disregarded. What a wonderful maxim! For some reason, no one in Moscow thought that Russia will by all means be reckoned with just as well after its delegation is expelled from the Council of Europe.

Strasbourg pie is a too dainty a tidbit to use war and the tragedy of refugees as filling. In Moscow, they failed to understand this. There is nothing else to do than hope that they will understand this in Kyiv, and Ukraine will eventually accomplish everything it promised when joining the PACE. Otherwise, our Deputies, no matter how many parliaments we have, will have to partake of Strasbourg pie only in the Havrosh Restaurant in Kyiv. The best thing about it is its location close to Ukraine House.