As part of Monaco’s presidency of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, Government Counsellor and Minister of External Relations and Cooperation Isabelle Berro-Amadeï travelled to Kyiv, accompanied by Gabriel Revel, the Principality’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, to meet with Ukrainian authorities.
The visit focused on several priority areas, including mechanisms of international justice, the role of the Council of Europe and the support it has provided throughout the conflict, and Ukraine’s broader social policies, with particular attention paid to women and children illegally deported to Russia.
Monaco assumed the Council of Europe presidency in May 2026, taking over at a pivotal moment for the organisation as it continues to navigate the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, alongside rising migration pressures and growing threats to democratic institutions across the continent. The Principality has been a member of the Council of Europe for more than two decades.
The issue of unlawfully deported Ukrainian children has remained a central concern for the organisation throughout that period. Council of Europe foreign ministers reaffirmed their determination to secure the return of these children at the same May 2026 session that formally transferred the Committee’s presidency to Monaco, tying the commitment directly to the execution of a July 2025 European Court of Human Rights ruling on the matter. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had earlier gone further still, voting in 2023 to formally designate Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children as genocide, a resolution welcomed at the time by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Monaco’s engagement with Ukraine on these issues predates its current presidency. Béatrice Fresko-Rolfo, head of Monaco’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has made repeated visits to Kyiv in recent years, including trips in 2024 and 2025, during which she met Ukrainian parliamentary leaders and reaffirmed Monaco’s solidarity with the Ukrainian people amid the ongoing conflict.