MOSCOW, June 5. /TASS/. Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) has passed a law denouncing an intergovernmental agreement with Ukraine on the establishment and terms of work for information and cultural centers, as their operation is impossible in the current situation.
The agreement was signed in Moscow in February 1998 and took effect in April 2012. The document provided for the establishment of a Russian center for science and culture in Kiev, which opened on leased premises in 2007. However, after the coup in 2014, "the center was operating in a highly complicated situation, facing attacks by nationalist groups," and "fully terminated its operations" in 2021, after Kiev imposed sanctions on Russia’s Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation.
According to explanatory notes to the law, Ukraine’s National Cultural Center was housed in a Moscow building that was purchased through a sales contract with the Moscow government dated November 23, 1998. "After the special military operation began in February 2022, Kiev severed diplomatic relations with Moscow and all staff members of Ukrainian missions left for Ukraine, as the center suspended its operations. However, it still has functional immunity because the accord formally remains in effect. <...> Under Article 2 of the agreement, the centers are supposed to operate under the guidance of their related diplomatic missions. However, this kind of guidance is in fact impossible following Ukraine’s move to cut off diplomatic relations with Russia," the document reads.
The explanatory notes point out that the future of the facility owned by Ukraine needs further consideration under Russian law.