MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. The institutions of the Council of Europe are rotten to the core and are no longer able to unite its members, so, it is necessary to consider setting up a new international organization in its place, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said during Thursday's Duma meeting.
"The institutions of the Council of Europe are rotten to the core, and today’s values can no longer unite its members. This is why we must think about creating a new organization, and do everything to accomplish this, so that the principles that we practice, protect and promote in international relations - mutual respect, absence of double standards, non-intervention in sovereign affairs of other states, respect for culture, traditions, history, and language - would be put at the foundation of this new organization’s operation and existence," Volodin said.
The lower house speaker noted that the Council of Europe was established in 1949, when the world was "multipolar," and all international institutions operated based "on the principles of respect for each other."
"What happened then? After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world became unipolar, and all these internal institutions, created earlier, began to gradually decay. Because, what they do in most cases is serve the interests of one country - the US, [namely] Washington," Volodin stressed.
On March 15, 2022, Moscow notified CoE Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric that Russia was pulling out of the organization and planned to denounce the European Convention on Human Rights. On March 16, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe decided to terminate Russia’s membership in the organization.