How Ukrainian Parliament Confuses World with its Appeals

Tuesday, 15 August 2023

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Ukraine must consciously fight for the world's attention, attracting the gaze of global leaders and societies.

However, Kyiv is sometimes gets too chaotic, denying in its appeals to all states and international organisations what it had previously stated.

Read about the "international spam" from Kyiv in an article by Bohdan Bernatsky, a senior lecturer at the 'Kyiv Mohyla Academy,' Spam in the Name of Ukraine: How Verkhovna Rada Simulates Activity with International 'Appeals'.

It's important to start with the basics. The fundamental rules of international relations are often misunderstood in Ukraine.

According to the Constitution, Ukraine's foreign policy is the prerogative of the president.

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is not detached from foreign policy. It's just that its powers are different.

There is a specialised committee in the Verkhovna Rada for foreign policy and inter-parliamentary cooperation. Its main task is to consider ratifications, but no less important is its involvement in approving foreign missions and coordinating inter-parliamentary communication.

Another parliament tool is appeals and statements addressed to the international community.

Measuring and evaluating this area is quite straightforward.

If someone really tasked the parliament with showing activity, they would surely be satisfied.

By February 24, 2022, the current session of the Verkhovna Rada had adopted about 15 appeals and 15 statements. In the year and a half since, there have been 42 (!) appeals and 12 statements.

The previous parliamentary session was also quite productive in this regard, passing 52 appeals and 12 statements over five years of work. However, the current pace is clearly harming the quality of the parliament's decisions.

In times of great war, Ukrainian parliamentarians seemed to have discovered a 'universal remedy.' The Rada attempts to solve all problems through appeals: not only to other parliaments and assemblies, customary Rada partners, but also to international courts, international organisations, and so on, raising a wide range of issues.

However, these "remedies" don't work, which is probably why this session of the parliament repeatedly adopts calls to the world.

This stamping out of appeals and statements raises eyebrows, even among the MPs themselves, who are sometimes the authors of these same appeals.

"Sometimes we vote for two resolutions on the same issue simply because the authors couldn't agree with each other. Imagine being the head of a foreign parliament and receiving two appeals from Ukraine with nearly identical text at the same time... It starts to look like spam," commented Member of Parliament Yaroslav Zhelezniak.

A logical question that recipient states should ask themselves is: which of the two documents represents the position of the Verkhovna Rada?

The resource of international attention is not unlimited. Even for Ukraine.

Adopting two or three appeals in one day and distributing them through all available channels simultaneously is an extremely unsuccessful strategy.

This creates the feeling among partners that official Kyiv isn't aiming to achieve its stated goal, but rather simulating activity.

Let's look at the effectiveness of the Verkhovna Rada's active work.

Has any parliament terminated a double taxation agreement with Russia after the Rada's appeal in June 2022? Currently, the answer is no. There are many similar examples. Even in a situation where Western policy is changing, there are grounds to doubt that the letters from the Hrushevsky street are the cause.

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