MOSCOW, November 27. /TASS/. Speaker of Russia’s State Duma Sergey Naryshkin has voiced the conviction that the blame for developments in Ukraine lies, in particular, with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
"During these two years [of anti-Russian sanctions - TASS] many events occurred in Ukraine, the blame for which rests, in particular, with the PACE," the speaker noted in a commentary published on his personal website on Friday. "It was largely due to its efforts (as well as the efforts of those European parliamentarians toeing the line of the United States) that the situation in this country reached a stalemate," the politician said, adding that "it was the West rather than Russia that allowed Neo-Nazis to take root there, to unleash an armed inter-civil conflict and steer the Ukrainian economy toward default."
According to Naryshkin, "it was not the Crimean referendum but the lies and the 'ostrich-like stance' taken by international organizations, such as the PACE, that contributed to spreading lies about life on the peninsula." He recalled that, unlike the Assembly leaders "who never bothered to learn more about the actual situation in Crimea," a number of European parliamentarians "had time to get first-hand information about it and to publicly dispel the myths launched by unscrupulous propaganda."
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Naryshkin recalled that, in an open letter to the PACE President Anne Brasseur published 18 months ago, he compared the scenario of "launching the Kiev Euromaidan" with the "Arab Spring" technologies and asked "not to contribute to whipping up passions at the European Union’s border." "Alas, my appeal was not heeded, and the situation on the continent became even worse than I expected," he said, referring to "hundreds of thousands of migrants, the speedy restoration of pre-Schengen cordons and the terrorist threat that has increased dramatically over this period of time." "The European security system and the very European unity is in crisis," the State Duma speaker noted citing "increasingly sharp disputes between the national governments and the European Union’s bureaucratic structures, not only on immigration quotas."
"It all started with the inability to soberly assess the problems and reluctance to conduct an equitable dialogue as well as with Russia’s discrimination on the European Union’s parliamentary platform," Naryshkin added.
The Russian delegation to the PACE was stripped of powers last April because of Moscow’s stance on Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. In 2015, the Parliamentary Assembly has taken decisions twice on the possible restoration of the Russian delegation’s voting rights, but the restrictions remain in force. Russia is denied of its right to vote at the Assembly sessions and is excluded from the organization’s governing bodies. In response to these sanctions, the Russian delegation has suspended its participation in the work of the PACE until the end of this year.