STRASBOURG, June 24. /ITAR-TASS/. The Council of Europe tends to overlook the seriousness of the problem of refugees fleeing the conflict zone in Ukraine’s southeastern regions, Grigory Petrenko, a member of the Moldovan delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.

“Speaking about the Council of Europe’s attitudes towards this problem, I believe this organization is not serious enough in tackling this problem. I think we must waste no time and shout about this imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine’s southeastern regions, and we must do it here, in Strasbourg,” he said.

PACE rapporteurs on Ukraine, he said, tended to ignore the situation. “It was them who insisted on the PACE January session’s passing a very unbalanced and biased report on Ukraine, and later, at the April session, the PACE passed a report that only added fuel to the fire instead of offering any solutions,” he said. “They were against the slightest amendments that could make the report more balanced. I think Ms. Mailis Reps, the PACE co-rapporteurs for Ukraine, resembles Ms. Psaki (the spokesperson for the United States Department of State). You tell her facts at a meeting of the monitoring commission and she would be sitting stony-faced and talk rubbish.”

“The Council of Europe is failing to cope with its role as far as the search for the way out of the situation in Ukraine is concerned, despite the fact that this country is officially monitored by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,” the Moldovan lawmaker noted. “The Council of Europe has relevant instruments to monitor the situation, to influence it. Regrettably, the Council of Europe has become an instrument in the geopolitical confrontation between the West and Russia.