Kyiv risks getting into an international scandal: they want to expel Savchenko from the Ukrainian delegation to PACE
Members of the Batkivshchyna parliamentary faction have not yet developed a common position on the issue of membership of the now former faction member Nadezhda Savchenko in the Ukrainian delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
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“Nimetska Khvilya” writes about this .
The publication notes that the decision of the Batkivshchyna party to exclude Savchenko from the faction in the Rada automatically called into question the people’s deputy’s status as a member of the Ukrainian delegation to PACE, where she was introduced in 2014. Then members of the faction included Savchenko in the delegation in the hope that international parliamentary immunity would help free her from Russian captivity.
However, the people’s deputy’s independent political steps and her existing disagreements with the position of the faction led to the fact that Savchenko formally lost the right to take the place of the Batkivshchyna representative in the Ukrainian PACE delegation.
Citing a source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the publication reports that the composition of the parliamentary delegation to PACE is approved by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, and nominations for members of the delegation are submitted by factions in accordance with quotas, which are calculated using a special formula. But still, only the Batkivshchyna faction can decide who exactly will represent it in PACE.
The Verkhovna Rada has repeatedly raised the issue of replacing Savchenko’s candidacy in the Ukrainian delegation, but Batkivshchyna itself avoids commenting on this topic, reports Nimetska Khvilya. Moreover, the position of the party’s press service and the delegation’s leadership on this matter is unclear.
“PACE is aware that they will suffer image losses if Savchenko is excluded from the delegation. At the same time, she has many supporters in PACE who attribute her “clumsy” steps to inexperience and believe that she, as a politician of the new generation, should be given a chance, and in “Batkivshchyna” they understand that she is not a team player, but her actions and public statements are difficult to control,” the publication says.