The Head of Russia’s State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Alexei Pushkov said that PASE ought to “forget about Russia for a while” and turn their attention to continental problems like the situation with refugees and attacks of migrants on women in Germany and “take the matter of Ukraine in hand”. The politician wrote about it on his Twitter page.
Moreover Mr. Pushkov said that in the absence of Russia the PASE “in fact throws itself to the periphery of all political talks concerning Ukraine”, - TASU (Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union) cites him. Earlier the Russian delegation decided to refuse willingly from participation in the PACE session on 25 – 29 January. Alexei Pushkov by explaining this decision referred to the fact that “Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered to all ambassadors in the CE countries to make measures in parliamentary delegations of these countries in PACE in order to bend them to refusal from return of total amount of credentials of the Russian delegation”.
In spite of refusal to participate in the session, Russia decided to pay in February the third part of regulation size in the amount of EUR 32 million of budget payment of Council of Europe (CE) as in accordance with article 10 of the financial regulations of the organization - before termination of first two months of year a country-member is obliged to pay to the budget at least the third part of the total annual installment.
Therewith Russia has planned to save the right for participation in the PACE’s work and to avoid any possible sanctions by acting according to the Charter of the organization. The PACE President Anna Brasser replied on the notification of Russian Party, received by her, that she regretted about the decision of Russia and reminded that the consequence of that solution would be exclusion of Russia delegation from the participation in the PACE’s work within 2016 or till the next parliamentary elections in Russia.
Author: Anna Dorozhkina