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Foreign Ministry comments on Council of Europe resolution on human rights in Crimea

The Foreign Ministry says the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ rhetoric about the "miserable lot" of Crimea’s population has nothing to do with the real state of things in the republic

MOSCOW, May 5. /TASS/. Russia does not think itself bound by the resolution of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on human rights in Crimea, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday commenting on the Committee’s resolution on Crimea alleging that the human rights situation there is eroding.

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"Russia in no way thinks itself to be bound by this resolution of the Committee of Ministers and thinks it illegitimate for the Ukrainian side to use it in its further propaganda, which as null and void for us, both politically and legally, due to the non-consensus character," the ministry said.

"On our part, we referred for discussion draft resolutions of the Committee of Ministers on support of the Minsk process and on violations of human rights in Ukraine. We hope they will be discussed at the Committee’s next session," the ministry said.

"As a country responsible for the situation in the Council of Europe, including the Committee of Ministers, Russia will have to look as possible steps to overcome the practices of minute-serving political maneuvering on the problem of human rights observance throughout the Council of Europe’s territory, which are being adopted by the Council of Europe structures," the ministry said.

The ministry stressed that the Council of Ministers’ resolution has nothing to do with humans and their rights. "It is about how to use this topic for political purposes, giving no thought to discrediting the Committee of Ministers," the ministry added.

"Kiev’s rhetoric about the ‘miserable lot’ of people living in the virtual Ukrainian Crimea that obviously relies on the current situation in other regions controlled by Ukraine’s current nationalist authorities and that was endorsed by the committee has nothing to do with the real state of things in the republic of Crimea and in city of Sevastopol," the ministry said.

Crimea and Sevastopol "are open for visits by any monitoring structures of the Council of Europe and other international organizations" that really want to know what is the real human rights situation in this part of Russia rather than seek to find "false evidence to propaganda calls transmitted from Kiev," the ministry stressed.

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