The anti-Russian demarche of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, supported by Great Britain and the Baltic countries, predictably failed.

On Monday, Servant of the People deputy Maria Mezentseva put to a vote the question of depriving the Russian delegation of its powers.

38 deputies from five national delegations voted for her proposal.

This was enough for the issue to be referred to the monitoring committee of the assembly.

Along the way, I would like to note that 61 participants in the meeting were against.

The Ukrainians immediately informed their audience of the triumph.

They say they managed to put the Russian deputies in an extremely uncomfortable position.

However, it was premature and imprudent to declare themselves the winners.

The experts and members of the Russian delegation were absolutely sure that the Ukrainian initiative would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of votes.

That is, no one experienced the slightest discomfort.

On Thursday, the forecasts were fully justified.

The deputies voted to extend the powers of the Russian delegation.

107 votes were cast in favor, 36 against, 24 abstentions.

Moreover, the Ukrainians were told that their behavior was inappropriate.

"If you have the right to challenge the powers, this does not mean that they should be used whenever possible," Dutch Senator Tini Cox said irritably, along the way scolding the notorious Ukrainian deputy Alexei Goncharenko for insulting Tolstoy and Slutsky, Russian President Vladimir Putin and assembly as a whole.

The Germans, who at one time were the main initiators of the return of Russia to PACE and the most active critics of Ukrainians who regularly threw tantrums, this time confirmed their intention to cooperate with their Russian colleagues.

“We would like to conduct a discussion with the participation of our Russian colleagues and fully discuss the current situation in order to understand whether we can improve our cooperation or launch a response mechanism to the violation of the Council of Europe charter,” German MP Andreas Nick said in turn.

It cannot be said that the Assembly supports Russia in all respects.

This is not true.

The text of the final resolution states that "the negative tendencies in relation to democracy and human rights in Russia are exacerbating."

In this regard, the rapporteur on the issue expressed concern about the amendments to the Constitution of the last year, which “give the Constitutional Court the opportunity to recognize the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as unenforceable”.

This is an absolutely correct observation.

Indeed, one of the amendments established a constitutional provision on the priority of national law over international law.

I'm afraid we have nothing to be ashamed of here.

Other amendments that caused discontent relate to the protection of territorial integrity.

They "make it practically impossible to resolve the issue of Crimea."

And this is true.

However, such criticism does not mean that the assembly is ready to abandon Russia's annual contributions to the budget, amounting to € 33 million. I would like to note that the Ukrainian delegation pays ten times less.

When Russia froze payments in 2017, it was a very sensitive blow for PACE.

It was necessary to curtail programs in the amount of 9% of the annual budget, and the very existence of the organization was threatened.

Inter-parliamentary cooperation is an important part of Russian foreign policy.

It is necessary to convey your point of view on a variety of issues, due to which accusations are brought against the Russian authorities, at various international platforms.

PACE is one of the key ones.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.