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Putin agrees to admit head of Moscow Helsinki Group to presidential human rights council

Russian human rights activist and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva will use the position offers a communications channel with the authorities

© EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV

MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted the initiative of the presidential human rights council to admit Russian human rights activist and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva as its member, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Peskov confirmed that the president had received an official letter to this effect from the council. "The president gave his consent," he added.

The letter asking to admit Russia’s oldest human rights activist, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who is 87, to the presidential human rights council was signed by the council’s chairman Mikhail Fedotov, Russian human rights ombudsperson Ella Pamfilova and former ombudsman Vladimir Lukin. Alexyeyeva was invited to rejoin the council by Fedotov in April 2015. "I was invited to return and I accepted this invitation," Alexeyeva told TASS, adding she just wanted to have a communications channel with the authorities. "There are very few communications channels with the authorities and the presidential human rights council is one of them," she said. "We should not ignore it in the current difficult time."

Alexeyeva quit the council in 2012.

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