Ukraine and its partners have prevented the Russian delegation from returning to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which would have ruined the Council of Europe's authority, Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Dmytro Kuleba said.

"Russia stays home. The PACE will be working without it in 2018. Ukraine mobilized its partners and managed to stop the forceful attempt to kill the institutional authority of the Council of Europe for the sake of the Russians," Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

This would not have been achieved without the systematic efforts taken by Ukraine on every level, Kuleba wrote on Facebook.

The steps taken by Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland "appeared to be in vain," as most delegates were not ready to accept Russia without sanctions for the events in Crimea and Donbas, the head of the Ukrainian mission to the PACE and a parliamentary deputy representing the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Volodymyr Aryev, wrote on Facebook.

Some PACE members, among them Italian socialist Michele Nicoletti, whom experts believe to be a leading candidate for the PACE presidency in 2018, will try to bring Russia back to the Assembly, Aryev wrote.

"Supported as they are by the pro-Russian lobby in the Council of Europe, they will be trying to modify the PACE's regulations and lift the provision which allows for sanctions against national delegations," Aryev wrote, adding, "This is what we will be fighting against during the 2018 session."

Incumbent PACE President Stella Kyriakides was elected on October 10, 2017. Her term ends this month.

The Chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, said in the mid-December 2017 that Russia would initiate a meeting with the PACE Presidential Committee, the heads of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers Bureau, and Russian members of parliament in Moscow in early 2018 to discuss cooperation.

The conditions for Russia's return to the Parliamentary Assembly have yet to be created, considering that the assembly has not signaled an intention to change its regulations to make depriving national delegations of the right to vote impossible, Slutsky said.

The PACE imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 in connection with the events in Crimea and Ukraine.