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Russia cuts its contribution to PACE by almost 11 mln euros

Russia has cut its contribution to the Council of Europe donated to PACE by one third

MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. Russia has cut its contribution to the Council of Europe donated to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) by one third or 11 million euros, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin told reporters on Tuesday.

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"We have frozen the payment transactions," Volodin said, noting that both Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had earlier spoken about the plan.

"During the year the funding is allocated in stages, and one third of the sum left for the year-end is not transferred, and that’s almost 11 million euros," Volodin said.

Matviyenko said earlier in an interview with TASS that Russia’s Foreign Ministry was handling relevant legal issues on cutting Russia’s contribution to PACE.

Volodin also commented on the situation with the impeachment of PACE President Pedro Agramunt after his trip to Syria together with Russian lawmakers. According to Volodin, this was done by Agramunt’s "opponents who are supporters of non-democratic procedures."

"This should have been expected: they just found a pretext. They should have thanked him (Agramunt) as he flew to Syria, where the fighting is ongoing, risking his own life, and saw himself what is going on. They should listen to him speaking about the events," Volodin said.

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