MOSCOW, July 7. /TASS/. The Russian delegation’s refusal to take part in the meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Vienna in connection with the violation of the regulations by the assembly’s members was a onetime measure, Russian parliamentarians will continue to work in that organization and uphold Russia’s position, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee and deputy head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Dzhabarov told TASS on Wednesday.
"We will work in that organization, but we cannot allow them to kick us at will and in violation of the rules," he said.
According to the senator, the Russian parliamentarians did the right thing. "There was an elementary substitution of concepts there. They think the way that it is convenient for them. When it is convenient for them to push through a resolution aimed against us, they say one thing, when it is not advantageous, they say something entirely different. We absolutely did the right thing," he pointed out.
Dzhabarov noted that the situation in the OSCE PA should not be compared with the one in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) when the Russian delegation left it for two years. "The PACE regulations contain a provision on the suspension of delegations’ powers. There is no such measure in the OSCE to strip a certain delegation of the right to vote or of being elected. There is a free exchange of views here, and we take advantage of that, and we will always uphold our position," he said.
Refusal to take part in OSCE PA meeting
On Tuesday, head of Russia’s delegation, Deputy Speaker of the Russian State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy left a meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in connection with the violation of the regulations during the voting on the anti-Russian resolution proposed by Ukrainian delegates. Later on, he explained on his Telegram channel that "the resolution had been approved with the violation of the regulations, since the adoption of the document requires 2/3 of the votes of all members of the assembly, not only the parliamentarians present in the hall."
According to that resolution, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly urges Russia to "reverse the illegal occupation of Crimea," withdraw its troops, military equipment and weapons from the peninsula, especially those that took part in the exercises in April 2021. It also calls on Russia to "lift all restrictions to the freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and through the Kerch Strait."