“Russia is not only a regime,” Petra Bayr, an Austrian lawmaker and President of the Assembly, said opening the Platform’s first meeting. … Europe has not forgotten you.”Formed in the late 1940s in the wake of the Second World War, the Council of Europe was intended to bring peace and good-neighborly relations to a ravaged continent. Even during its brief period of democracy in the 1990s, Russia fell short of many of the standards accepted in the Council of Europe. My friends imprisoned in Belarus, which never joined the Council of Europe, did not even have that. After Putin attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s continued membership became untenable, and the Assembly voted to expel it.

Source: Washington Post February 09, 2026 23:16 UTC