MOSCOW, January 12. /TASS/. The current state of affairs in which Russia is absent from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is very flexible and Moscow will promote the elimination of the current crisis in the future, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksey Meshkov told TASS in an interview.
He recalled that Russia, alongside Britain, Germany, Italy, Turkey and France, was on the list of main contributors to the CE’s budget.
"If retained, this status will ensure the necessary conditions for advancing Russia’s approaches in the Council of Europe," Meshkov said.
"The situation where Russia’s Federal Assembly is absent from the PACE may change any moment," he said. "In that connection we believe it would be wrong to consider it as a reason for revising the parameters of Russia’s contribution to financing the Council of Europe’s activities."
Meshkov said the Russian Foreign Ministry was determined to work further for overcoming the crisis in the Assembly.
The Russian delegation to the PACE in April 2014 was stripped of its main rights over events in Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. In 2015 the PACE considered the possibility of restoring the Russian delegation’s rights twice only to leave the sanctions in effect. Russia still has no right to vote or participate in the activities of the Assembly’s leadership bodies and its monitoring missions that keep an eye on elections in the whole CE space. In response Russia suspended its participation in PACE up to the end of 2015. In January 2016 Russia refused to apply for a confirmation of its powers in 2016.