Commentary

Ukraine's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has walked out in protest and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has voiced his "disappointment" over Russia having its voting rights reinstalled at the body after a three-year hiatus. German and French delegates largely backed Russia's return, arguing it was better to have Russia inside the body than out, and also because the human rights court gave Russians a destination of "last hope". In a June 25 statement on his Facebook page, Zelenskiy said he tried to convince French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in separate meetings to not allow Russia back into Europe's main human rights body until it meets PACE's demands on adherence to principles of rule of law and human rights...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced the Deputy Justice Minister Serhiy Petukhov as head of an official delegation after the latter publicly insisted that the man chosen to head the President’s Administration is prohibited by law from holding public office. The decree (№400/2019) on the President’s site gives no explanation as to why Petukhov has been replaced as head of Ukraine’s delegation to the 22nd Diplomatic Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law less than a month after being appointed. There may, of course, be some other reason, however it is Petukhov, admittedly in his capacity as Deputy Justice Minister on Issues of European Integration, who has very publicly rejected attempts by the Zelensky team to deny that Andriy Bohdan falls under the scope of the Law on Lustration and initiated a ‘lustration check’...

On the same day that Russia challenged the jurisdiction of a second UN tribunal whose orders it is flouting, the Council of Europe’s Rules Committee adopted a draft resolution which could open the door to removing the sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. The resolution has yet to be voted on by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and it is a ‘compromise’ which may still not satisfy Russia, however the message sent by any such compromise is disastrous. If you are a big country, and can blackmail with lost revenue to PACE, and potential withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, measures will be found to waive or at least weaken entirely warranted sanctions...

The U.S. special envoy on Ukraine has called Russian activity in eastern Ukraine an "occupation" and has called on Moscow to start implementing its obligations under the 2015 Minsk accords -- the international agreement aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists. U.S. State Department Special Representative Kurt Volker made the remarks on May 28 while speaking to journalists about the prospects for Ukraine's future under newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "Russia has a lot that it needs to do to implement the Minsk agreements," Volker told journalists via a video link from Washington. "Ukraine also has its responsibilities."...

A UN maritime tribunal has ruled that Russia must “immediately” release 24 Ukrainian sailors and three Ukrainian naval vessels captured by Russia in November. The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea delivered its ruling on May 25 on the case Ukraine brought against Russia. Russia seized the ships in November near the Kerch Strait bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. Relations between Russia and Ukraine have been tense since Moscow annexed Crimea in March 2014 and began providing military, political, and economic support to separatist formations waging a war against Kyiv in parts of eastern Ukraine. Tribunal President Jin-Hyun Paik said that judges decided Russia must "immediately" return the three ships to Ukraine's custody and release the sailors and allow them to return to Ukraine. Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that Russia could send a positive signal by adhering to the ruling...

On May 21, newly-appointed Ukrainian Presidential Administration head Andriy Bohdan stirred up controversy with Ukrainian political commentators when he announced the intentions of Ukraine’s new authorities to conduct a referendum on a peace deal with Russia regarding Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine broken off from government control with the help of Russian financial and military support. “So it wouldn’t be some politician making a decision breaking apart society, but so the people, society itself would make this decision, whether our deal suits them,” Bohdan said, adding that the team of newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyi is forced to search for a compromise with Russia.“The only thing is, Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that we don’t trade our territories and our people,” Bohdan noted, referring to Zelenskyi’s statement in one of his rare appearances at a political talk show...

ainian Archbishop Borys Gudziak, a visionary leader in the Catholic Church and higher education, will be presented with the Notre Dame Award in a ceremony June 29 in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced on May 6. “In the face of innumerable challenges, Archbishop Gudziak has made the Ukrainian Catholic University a center for cultural thought, Christian witness and the formation of a Ukrainian society based on human dignity,” Father Jenkins said. “At the same time, he has steadfastly provided dedicated pastoral guidance to members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. It will be an honor to recognize his courageous and faithful service when we visit Ukraine in June”...

“Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It’s not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother’s wounded, half alive. The little daughter’s on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl’s been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse … The mother begs, ‘Soldier, kill me!’ ” The late Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote this profoundly disturbing narrative in a poem called “Prussian Nights” in 1945, as he witnessed his fellow soldiers in the communist Soviet Red Army engaging in mass looting and raping in Eastern Germany as they advanced on Adolf Hitler’s Berlin...

The 20th anniversary of a landmark U.S. foreign policy initiative has slipped by virtually unnoticed. In 1999, NATO began its post-Cold War expansion into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, taking on three new members: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Last month, the alliance rather quietly marked that event — as well as the 70th anniversary of its founding — at a meeting of foreign ministers in Washington, rather than a heads-of-state gathering that the occasion seemed to merit. This was no accident, given the near-certainty that President Donald Trump would have spoiled any NATO summit he attended. It was also a pity, because NATO expansion ranks as one of the great U.S. foreign policy successes of the post-Cold War era...

Ukraine has turned to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crew. Critical hearings are due on May 10-11, 2019 into Ukraine’s application for provisional measures to get the 24 men released. Russia has a long track record of flouting international rulings and has just announced that it will not attend the open hearings on May 10. This ruling will, however, matter and Moscow is currently endeavouring to ‘prove’ that ITLOS does not have jurisdiction over the case. Russia could checkmate itself since one of the reasons why the Tribunal would decide it does not have jurisdiction is if it was proven that this was part of military conflict, which Russia has every reason to deny...