MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. The Kremlin is closely watching the situation with issuing US visas to Russian senators who plan to take part in the session of the inter-parliamentary council in New York, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
"Of course, [the situation] is being watched, and, of course, it is being watched closely," Peskov said. "After all, we are talking about high-ranking Russian officials," he added.
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The spokesman said it is necessary to wait for the decision of the US embassy first. "Let’s not speculate hypothetically," he said stressing that "the topic is important" because it concerns Russia’s high-ranking officials.
On July 1, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said that Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin will be denied entry to Finland to participate in the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (PA OSCE) in Helsinki on July 5-9. The decision was explained by the fact that the State Duma speaker was included in EU’s "blacklist" of sanctioned officials.
Naryshkin later announced that the Russian delegation as a whole will not participate in the PA OSCE session in Helsinki, where it planned to put forward draft resolutions on impermissibility of sanctions against parliamentarians and countering Nazism rehabilitation. However, the Duma speaker confirmed that Russia plans to participate in the next PA OSCE session in Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator.