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New Iron Curtain should not be put up — Russia Presidential Human Rights Council chairman

"Enough with building walls, let’s build cooperation without walls, without frontiers,” Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, said
Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council TASS/Zurab Dzhavakhadze
Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council
© TASS/Zurab Dzhavakhadze

MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, considers the cancellation of the St. Petersburg Dialogue forum an attempt to build the new “Iron Curtain.”

“Now the situation is very tense. This is the bad signal that the St. Petersburg Dialogue forum and the session of the coordination committees were cancelled,” Fedotov said during a video conference with the participants in the forum.

“Today some forces that appear in Germany want to build the new ‘Iron Curtain’,” he said. “No one can build the new Iron Curtain or a new wall between our countries and the peoples. Enough with building walls. Let’s build cooperation without walls, without frontiers,” Fedotov said.

A member of the forum, former German ambassador to Russia Hans-Friedrich Von Ploetz, said different views gave grounds for making discussions more intensive.

In October 2014, the session of the Russian-German civil forum, St. Petersburg Dialogue, was cancelled on Germany’s initiative for the first time in 13 years. In mid-November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted the forum be reformed and its leadership be replaced.