© Sputnik / Kirill KallinikovFILE PHOTO: The burnt-out Crocus City Hall venue following a deadly terrorist attack.
The European rights body is discrediting itself by ignoring last week's massacre, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said
The Council of Europe has disgraced itself by failing to condemn the recent Crocus City Hall terrorist attack near Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
The massacre at a concert venue last Friday claimed over 140 lives. According to the Russian official, the lack of reaction to it by the "self-purported conscience of Europe" is just "the latest shameful episode in the history of this organization."
"This line of behavior by Strassburg proves once again the deep degradation of the Council of Europe today, which has drowned in political hypocrisy and double standards," Zakharova told RIA Novosti on Friday.
Comment: For more comment from Russia on the reactions from the West see also:
West behaving 'suspiciously' over Moscow terror attack claims - LavrovBelow there are a few remarks about the Council of Europe and its relation with Russia.
1) While the Council of Europe is displeased with Russia, it has for decades been okay with various colour revolutions, and the participation of member states in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yeme, much silence over Gaza... as if he destruction of the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, in fact whole countries, is alright as long as it is nominally in the name of democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. For a dialogue to become possible in the future, where are the sides located today and what is the history?
2) From the article:
Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe in March 2022, after 26 years of membership.
The
Wiki confirms that Russia was a member from 1996 to 2022, and not only withdrew, but was expelled.
"During its membership, Russia was suspended from voting rights on multiple occasions. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 16 March the Committee of Ministers voted to expel Russia from the council with immediate effect.[2][3]"
"Suspension and exclusion of Russia[edit]Main article: Russia in the Council of Europe
[...] In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, precipitating a conflict, the Council stripped Russia of its voting rights in the PACE.[90] In response, Russia began to boycott the Assembly in 2016, and beginning from 2017 ceased paying its annual membership dues of 32.6 million euros (US$37.1 million) to the Council[90][91] placing the institution under financial strain.[92]"
3) Considering that Russia is no longer a member, it may explain why the the Secretary General of the Council of Europe does not have much to say when a few hundred civilian are killed or wounded in
the second largest city in Europe and her choosing to focus on a traffic accident of a member state.
From the article:
Moscow has accused the organization of abandoning its humanitarian mandate and morphing into an instrument of US geopolitical ambitions used to enforce the so-called 'rules-based order'. The situation in Ukraine was a major source of Russian tensions with the body for years before open hostilities began in February 2022.
The Wiki to "rules-based order" is the same as "
Liberal international order" which has:
"In international relations, the liberal international order (LIO), also known as the rules-based international order (RBIO),[1] or the rules-based order (RBO),[2] describes a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political liberalism, economic liberalism and liberal internationalism since the late 1940s.[3] More specifically, it entails international cooperation through multilateral institutions (like the United Nations, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund) and is constituted by human equality (freedom, rule of law and human rights), open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy, and monetary cooperation.[3][4][5]The order was established in the aftermath of World War II, led in large part by the United States.[3][6]"
Below there is some history about the origin of the Council of Europe:
4) The early history of the organization includes Winston Churchill. In the
Wiki there is:
The United Kingdom's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill first publicly suggested the creation of a "Council of Europe" in a BBC radio broadcast on 21 March 1943,[15] while the Second World War was still raging. In his own words,[16] he tried to "peer through the mists of the future to the end of the war", and think about how to rebuild and maintain peace on a shattered continent. Given that Europe had been at the origin of two world wars, the creation of such a body would be, he suggested, "a stupendous business". He returned to the idea during a well-known speech at the University of Zurich on 19 September 1946,[17][18] throwing the full weight of his considerable post-war prestige behind it.
5) Skipping elegantly how Britain itself contributed to the European conflicts, one finds that the same complex Winston Churchill is mentioned in these articles:
Different era, same mental instability: 'Best Brit Ever' Winston Churchill wanted to wipe Moscow off the map with atomic bomb, FBI memo reveals
World War II: "Operation Unthinkable", Churchill's planned betrayal and invasion of the Soviet Union, July 1945
Declassified 70 years later: Files reveal Winston Churchill thwarted King Edward VIII's Nazi plot to retake British throne
Winston Churchill left a legacy of global conflict and crimes against humanityWinston Churchill's shocking use of chemical weapons
Winston Churchill "Caused Death of One Million in Indian Famine"
Top Russian official: Churchill had Stalin killed, US bombed Russian Far East in 50s
More interesting, perhaps:
Churchill and Eisenhower buried UFO incident during WW2, Churchill realised disclosure would destroy religion
Churchill demanded UFO briefing: secret files6) In the following article,
Churchill - Putin: Two Speeches - Two Worldviews from December 2022, there is:
He [Churchill] continued on in his speech to talk about the search for peace and security after years of war, in which he acknowledged the debt owed to Russia for defeating the Nazis in Germany and spoke of the establishment of the United Nations as a means of achieving it. But immediately after that he stated the need for an armed force, created outside of the UN, which would act as the policeman of the world and whose main forces would be provided and controlled by the USA and Britain.
This idea was soon translated into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created three years later on April 4, 1949 and which, soon after that, revealed its aggressive character and purpose when it attacked North Korea and China in 1950, under the guise of a UN operation.
Churchill justified the need for such a force by declaring that the world faced the treat of "tyranny," by which he meant primarily socialism and its threat to western capital and in particular Soviet socialism.
...
But he then said something important that both London and Washington now deny, the Russian need for security. He stated,
"We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression,"
But of course, that left open the threat of NATO aggression and of the Cold War and immediately after that paragraph he modulated his speech to claim the USSR was a threat to the peoples of the west, with this famous line,
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
Of course, this "Iron Curtain,' existed only in Churchill's imagination as the peoples of eastern Europe had been liberated from fascism and allowed to enjoy the benefits of socialism, which was largely denied to the peoples in western Europe and North America. The artificial division expressed in the phase "Iron Curtain, was really a propaganda phrase setting the stage for the economic and military siege imposed on the new socialist republics in Eastern Europe, and on the USSR which became known as the Cold War.
He also stated that, "The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe."
But he did not include the USSR or Russia in his vision of a united Europe, which meant a unified Europe under Anglo-American domination, and falsely claimed that,
"Though I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war... they desire the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines,"
thereby projecting onto Russia, the ambitions of the Anglo-American alliance that could only maintain its dominance through war and the threat of war.
Reading the above one could say that the Council of Europe, in the context of events over the last 10 years, has returned to the vision of Winston Churchill. And, as if by coincidence, the Council of Europe celebrates 75 years on May 5, while NATO celebrates 75 years on April 4.
7) The Wiki about the
Member states of the Council of Europe has:
Observer status was designed for non-European democracies willing to contribute to democratic transitions in Europe.[16]
Canada, Japan, Mexico, the U.S. and the Holy See have observer status with the Council of Europe and can participate in the Committee of Ministers and all intergovernmental committees. They may contribute financially to the activities of the Council of Europe on a voluntary basis.
The parliaments of Canada, Israel and Mexico have observer status with the Parliamentary Assembly and their delegations can participate in Assembly sessions and committee meetings.
Do we need to say there has been no discussion of the Nord Stream sabotage, see links in
Biden's attack on Nord Stream pipelines was aimed at Germany - Seymour Hersh, no major upset about democracy in Israel, or consideration of topics like
The End of Democracy: "What I'm Describing is Military Rule"8) Looking into the last 2023 from the Council of Europe called
"State of Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law - an Invitation to Recommit to the Values and Standards", there is in the introduction by the Secretary General:
On 16 and 17 May of this year, European leaders will gather in Reykjavik for the 4th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe. This will be an opportunity for our 46 member states to recommit to the values and standards that this Organisation protects and promotes across our common legal area. More than that, these leaders will have the chance to agree on specific actions and priorities that will improve the lives of people throughout our continent. This could not be more timely. The brutal, illegal and ongoing aggression launched by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and its people has made a deep impact on the geopolitics of Europe and the wider world. Every international organisation must be clear about how it will adapt its action in order to take account of the new realities and to ensure the success of multilateralism in line with its mandate. The Council of Europe is no exception.
■This Organisation was established to ensure peace based on unity, underpinned by human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Democratic security of this kind, however, relies on political will. The Russian Federation lost that will over the course of many years. It began a process of democratic backsliding that can be charted in previous annual reports and, ultimately, led up to the appalling violence that necessitated Russia's swift exclusion from this Organisation last year.
■Reykjavik will therefore be the place in which we ask member states to demonstrate their determination to ensure that the Russian Federation will be both the first and last country to break away from our values and our Organisation, that democratic backsliding will be halted and reversed and that they will work together so that our standards are applied across every aspect of Europeans' lives - both existing challenges and those that emerge.
Wikis to terms used:
multilateralism and
democratic backsliding.
9) From the article:
The council's website and social media do not appear to mention the mass murder in Russia. Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric has not reacted to it on her X (formerly Twitter) account.
Marija Pejčinović Burić is Croation, a country that emerged after the NATO led dismantling of Yugoslavia, thanks. Many CoE members and its affiliated observers would argue, the dismantling was thanks to humanitarian intervention, promotion of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the "rules-based order". For more on how that came about, see the links in this article:
NATO's illegal 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia 'a huge tragedy' - Putin10) On the balance of the evidence, the reader may consider, if the Russian Federation is justified in holding that the CoE is "morphing into an instrument of US geopolitical ambitions used to enforce the so-called 'rules-based order'."? Another question is, what might become of the CoE as the US geopolitical ambitions meet with increasing opposition, not just from Russia, but from China and the Global South?
More dialogue between Russia and Western Europe is possible in the future, but it is as if it is not even intended to resume any time soon, or is that too pessimistic, given:
Other nations aren't unfriendly, their elites are unfriendly - Putin
Comment: Suppressing findings which are inconvenient is nothing new for Western governments so it's no real surprise that the findings have not been made public. Whether anything changes now that the findings are public remains to be seen (don't hold your breath).
See also: