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Russian MP urges response to Kiev’s bill calling Crimea occupied territory

MOSCOW, March 26, /ITAR-TASS/. Chairman of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) Committee on Constitutional Legislation Vladimir Pligin urged the Russian authorities to respond to the Ukrainian parliament’s legislative motion to consider Crimea and Sevastopol occupied territories.

The draft law officially titled “On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens on the Occupied Territories” was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on March 19 and immediately passed in the first reading. Its second reading is scheduled for March 26.

“This draft law seeks not so much to ensure the rights and freedoms as to impose maximum restrictions on any activity in Russian regions and on possibilities for Russian citizens. This is a fundamental infringement upon the rights of Russian citizens. Moreover, this draft law systemically severs the numerous family ties that exist between citizens of Ukraine and Russia,” Pligin said on Wednesday, March 26.

The adoption of this draft law will infringe upon human rights and will ban inter-family ties, an unprecedented move in contemporary history, the MP said. “Breaking ties between people is absolutely unacceptable. There has never been such severance of ties between concrete people in modern history,” Pligin said.

He stressed that Russia should respond to this draft law which “introduces provisions that are unacceptable from the humanitarian point of view and authorises sanctions and gross interference in the work of legal entities and business ties”, he said.

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