Time.news – The European Parliament has approved a resolution which defines Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The resolution was passed by 494 votes to 58, with 44 abstentions, with several amendments adopted to the original text.
The deputies – reads a note from the European Parliament – underline that the intentional attacks and atrocities of the Russian forces and their proxies against citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law are all acts of terror and war crimes. For this, they declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism that “uses terrorist means”.
As the EU cannot currently declare states as sponsors of terrorism in an official way, Parliament calls on the EU and its countries to create an adequate legal framework and consider adding Russia to this list. This would trigger a series of measures against Moscow and would lead to serious restrictions on relations between Brussels and Moscow.
MEPs call on the Council to also add the ‘Wagner Group’ paramilitary organisation, the 141 Special Motorized Regiment also known as ‘Kadyrovites’, and other armed groups, militias and Russian-funded delegations to the EU’s list of terrorist subjects. Parliament also calls on the EU to further isolate Russia internationally, including with regard to membership of international organizations and bodies such as the United Nations Security Council.
MEPs also call for a reduction in diplomatic ties with Russia and a limiting of EU contacts with Russian officials to the bare minimum, as well as closing and banning Russian state institutions in the EU that spread propaganda around the world. Given the Kremlin’s escalating acts of terror against the Ukrainian people, EU countries are urged to quickly complete the Council’s work on the ninth package of sanctions against Moscow.
Furthermore, EU countries should prevent, investigate and prosecute any attempts to circumvent the sanctions in force and, together with the Commission, consider possible measures against countries that try to help Russia evade the measures.
The votes against among the Italians
Four Italian MEPs have voted against the European Parliament resolution to define Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. We are talking about Francesca Donato (non-registered group); and Pietro Bartolo, Andrea Cozzolino and Massimiliano Smeriglio of the S&d group. Instead, as already announced, the MEPs of the 5 Star Movement abstained.
The Kremlin’s reaction
“The European Parliament has adopted a resolution recognizing Russia as a ‘sponsor of terrorism’. I propose to recognize the European Parliament as a sponsor of idiocy.” This is the answer, on Telegram, of the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.
Hacker attack
The website of the European Parliament, as well as the wifi connection throughout the Strasbourg office, has been down for some time. Claims of a hacker attack by Anonymous Russia and Killnet are circulating on the web. In several countries, the European Parliament website is still inaccessible.
The availability of @Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic.
This traffic is related to a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) event.
EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.— Jaume Duch (@jduch) November 23, 2022
“The availability of the European Parliament website is currently being impacted externally due to high levels of external network traffic. This traffic is related to a Distributed Denial of Service (Ddos) attack event. The European Parliament teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.” The communication director of the European Parliament, Jaume Duch writes it in a tweet.