PACE’s decisions incomplete and invalid without Russia

Decisions taken by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) without the Russian delegation are incomplete, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko said on Tuesday.

"If our delegations do not take part in the PACE work (and we will not do it on discriminatory conditions), all decisions taken by the PACE are incomplete and invalid," she told journalists at a press conference on the results of the spring session of the Federation Council and added that Russia "is not the one who initiated this confrontation".

Matviyenko also said she regrets that "such a previously respected parliamentary assembly started growing into a forum for pressuring countries which do not yield to dictates from Brussels and Washington and have their own course". From being a forum for democracy, human rights and parliamentarism, it turned into "a forum for flouting all of these", Matviyenko noted.

She also said that international parliamentary organizations should meet in countries "not influenced by Brussels and sanctions".

In January this year PACE renewed the suspension of Russia’s voting rights over the crisis in Ukraine until April. In response, the Russian delegation left Strasbourg and said it would boycott sessions until the year’s end.