STRASBOURG, April 08. /ITAR-TASS/. The PACE Monitoring Committee has passed a draft resolution, based on a report by Stefan Shennah, that suggests depriving the Russian delegation of its right to vote at PACE until the end of 2014. The move came definitely in a bid to punish Russia for its incorporation of Crimea, Leonid Slutskiy, the deputy head of the Russian delegation to PACE and the head of the Russian State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, told journalists on Tuesday.

It means the Committee voted for a ‘soft option’ of sanctions against Russia while rejecting a motion to freeze the Russian delegation’s powers.

“The majority of the Committee’s members voted against a proposal by Britain’s Robert Walter to freeze the powers of the Russian delegation. As a result, an attempt to deprive us of the PACE membership in 2014 was thwarted at the level of the PACE Monitoring Committee,” Slutskiy emphasized.

PACE will consider a report on the Russian delegation’s powers on Thursday, April 10.

Slutskiy hopes the Parliamentary Assembly will back up the results of voting at the PACE Monitoring Commission. He also expects Robert Walter to re-submit his amendment.

“But since the committee’s vote on the issue was negative, he will find it hard to convince PACE,” Slutskiy stressed, adding that PACE’s stance was tending towards dialogue and contacts with Russia.

Meanwhile, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian State Duma Committee for International Affairs, said after the PACE Monitoring Committee meeting on Tuesday that PACE’s stance on Ukraine was flawed because the organization was closing its eyes to anything that did not fit into its concept of a purely democratic revolution.