The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has adopted a resolution in which Russia was recognized as "a party to the Minsk agreements". This is reported from Strasbourg by correspondent of European Pravda.
It is reported that on January 30, the PACE approved a resolution on the status of the monitoring procedure with critical comments towards Russia, in which, in particular, it expressed concern about the anti-democratic processes in the Russian Federation.
The document claims that the Russian Federation "reinforces the negative trends of democracy, the rule of law and human rights… including the arbitrary use of anti-extremism legislation to hush up opposition and criticism from civil society, worsening religious freedom in the country, such as the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses; establishes "borders" and carries out creeping annexation of the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; carried out illegal annexation of the Crimea and military aggression in the east of Ukraine".
The document also contains a number of requirements for Russia. The mentioned requirements among them are:
- to fully implement the Minsk agreements to which the Russian Federation is a party (the highlighted phrase was added at the suggestion of Ukraine, which was supported by the vast majority);
- to stop the military invasion and support of illegal armed formations in eastern Ukraine;
- to abolish the illegal annexation of Crimea;
- to stop and abolish the establishment of the "border" and the creeping annexation of the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia;
- to remove any legal obstacles to the unconditional implementation of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and unconditionally comply with the court decision (EP note: as it is known, Putin proposed amendments to the Constitution that allow not to implement the ECHR decisions);
- to unconditionally and fully cooperate with the general investigation team and the Dutch prosecutor's office in order to bring those responsible for the MH17 flight downing and others to justice
The key debate was caused by the paragraph on the Minsk agreements, which outraged Russia. The Russians insisted that the mention of "Minsk" was unacceptable.
"We are doing everything we can to help, but we are not a party to this agreement. We are not a party to the conflict", - Russian MP Nikolay Ryzhak convinced the PACE deputies.
Despite the protests of the Russians, the document was approved by an overwhelming majority - 49 votes against 17, - the report said.