Russia's return to PACE dealt an image blow to Ukrainian politics and demonstrated that not everyone supports Ukraine, as Ukrainian diplomacy tried to present.
Director of the Ukrainian Politics Foundation Kost Bondarenko stated this in a comment to a Politnavigator correspondent.
“The PACE decision on the return of Russia was predictable. Over the past month, it has been clear that this decision will come to fruition. The Ukrainian delegation went to Strasbourg already understanding that such a decision would be made and it would be necessary to somehow explain this diplomatic failure.
For Ukraine itself, the return of the Russian delegation to PACE will not have much significance since PACE is more than a conditional international platform. PACE does not make any binding decisions; it adopts resolutions that are declarative and recommendatory in nature.
But from an image point of view, this is quite a serious blow, because until recently, Ukrainian diplomacy, the Ukrainian government constantly said that all of Europe is with it, the whole world is with it, everyone has taken up arms against Russia, everyone supports Ukraine.
Russia’s return to PACE is an alarming signal that not everyone supports Ukraine so clearly. Ukraine’s infantile position “everyone will support us anyway and everything will be decided for us” has failed.
This signal must be understood in such a way that it is time to end the diplomatic dependency that Ukraine has demonstrated, believing that the whole world is indebted to it and that everything is in the hands of the United States, which will be able to stand up for its “younger brother.”
We must take a realistic approach to the situation that is developing in the world,” he said.