You can read the whole text of the article by Ariadna Rokossovskaya “Calculations in Hamburg” in the web-page of “Rossiyskaya Gazeta“

Mr. Alexey Pushkov, Mr. Sergey Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation has recently informed Mr. Thorbjørn Jagland, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe that Russia intends to suspend payments for 2017 until the powers of the Russian national delegation are fully restored. You headed the Russian delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 2012 till 2015, when Russia finally decided to leave the Assembly. In your opinion does the further engagement of the Russian delegation in the work of the PACE make any sense or not?

Alexey Pushkov: There are no sense now. At this moment the Assembly is dominated by the anti-Russian block and it is not in the interests of Russia to reengage in its work. During the June session of the PACE another scandal broke out as Mr. Pedro Argamunt, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly was accused of having too soft approach towards Russia, condemned for visiting Syria and meeting President Bashar Assad. As a result, a small but effective anti-Russian block led by Ukraine managed to amend the Rules of Procedure of the PACE. A new provision was incorporated which allowed to dismiss a president. This was done to ensure that Mr. Pedro Argamunt would not preside over the Assembly during the October session. In this regard, one of the members of the Assembly wrote me with sadness a few days ago «It looks as if Ukraine is occupying the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe».

In April 2014 we left PACE due to the sanctions. As we came back in January 2015, we understood that this was a right thing to leave and left again for a long time. Until our powers are restored, Russia will not return. In that context, Moscow’s decision to suspend the payments to the Council of Europe is an important message to the leadership of this organisation. Russia does not intend to finance submissively the institution where the rights of its delegation are infringed. The leadership of the CoE has been long pretending that the PACE is a clueless parliamentary club which the Council of Europe is not responsible for. However, the PACE constitutes a part of the Council of Europe and both the member-states and the leadership of the CoE shall bear responsibility for what is happening there.

And now it is the most blatant anti-Russian groups who set the style there namely the MPs from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili’s followers from Georgia. By the way, each time when the Russian delegation was present, another anti-Russian hysteria commenced.

I think, it was reasonable for Russia to remain in the Assembly till 2014. No doubts, we faced conflicts, some of them were rather intense as debates over Syria, for example. A difficult situation was connected with the report on lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death. But we still had strong positions: as the head of our delegation I presided over the group of European Democrats which included 83 European MPs, and represented it in the Presidential Committee of the Assembly. It implies that we could influence the adoption of resolutions and were able to contribute to the decision-making process in the PACE. But when anti-Russian lobby deeply concerned about the increasing Russian influence in the Assembly took advantage of what was happening in Ukraine and decided to take revenge, it was no longer reasonable for us to remain. Nowadays, few care about what is happening in the PACE. The decisions of this organisation are of an advisory nature, and even the Council of Europe is not bound by them. Thus they can adopt anything but this will have no practical consequences. And it is an irrealizable nonsense what they adopt and its senselessness is covered with radical demands. The presence in such an organisation where the pursuit of Western geopolitical interests has gained the upper hand over the declared principles of the respect for human rights, the rule of law and the democracy is senseless for us now. In the future, if the anti-Russian block turns into a loud but a minority group as a result of the changes in the EU policy or positive developments in the international arena, we may reconsider this decision. However, at this moment I see neither reason, nor perspective, not interest for Russia to restore the work of our delegation in the PACE.