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Russian lawmaker warns PACE against "following Ukraine’s bad example"

Russia urges PACE to take decisive measures to deescalate the crisis and help ease the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said

Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin Anna Isakova/TASS

Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin

© Anna Isakova/TASS

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. Russia’s speaker of lower house of parliament, the State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin has called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) not to “follow the bad example of Ukraine” and erect “new walls of mistrust” in Europe.

“We all need an engaged dialogue at various international venues, primarily, within the Council of Europe. We don’t need new walls of mistrust, especially this year, when the whole Europe has just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” Naryshkin said at a meeting with PACE President Anne Brasseur.

The world “should not follow the bad example of Ukraine which has announced plans to set up a new European wall,” Naryshkin said. Kiev is already “digging the ditch and mounting a barbed wire,” he said.

“This is nonsense in our modern world,” the lawmaker said in comments on Ukraine’s plans, which were unveiled by the country’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in September.

Under the project, dubbed the “Wall,” Ukraine is starting to build a fortified 2,295-kilometer border with Russia. A ditch 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep will be dug on the land border with Russia.

The lawmaker said Russia urges PACE to take decisive measures to deescalate the crisis and help ease the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. He said PACE fails to “use its potential and capacity to react harshly and decisively towards the situation in Ukraine.”

Naryshkin has suggested that PACE should establish an international group to investigate the crimes against humanity in Europe and discuss humanitarian issues during a round table.

“Such crimes include, in particular, the tragedy in Odessa, when Ukrainian nationalist radicals burnt dozens of civilians alive because they disagreed with the February coup,” he said.

These crimes also include mass graves near Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, and also the use of banned means of warfare by Ukrainian troops, namely cluster bombs and phosphorous munitions.

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