2024-02-14 22:57:46
Russia has not yet officially informed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) about the planned termination of cooperation, the Austrian APA agency reported.
“The International Secretariat has not yet received any official notification from the Russian parliamentary delegation to the OSCE about the winter session or its intention to leave the Assembly,” an OSCE PA spokesperson told APA today. The meeting will be held on February 22 and 23.
Russia’s plans to no longer participate in the work of the OSCE parliamentary body have been apparent since last week. Russian diplomats had initially announced that Russian parliamentarians would not participate in the upcoming winter session in Vienna due to the “Ukrainization of the agenda”.
Yesterday, the Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, announced the termination of cooperation.
“It’s time to say goodbye to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,” he said in the State Duma, referring to the official decision to this effect taken on February 21 by the two Russian parliamentary chambers – the State Duma and the Federation Council.
The approval was announced by Vice President Pyotr Tolstoy, who heads the Russian parliamentary delegation to the OSCE.
“This organization has clearly become Russophobic and is so critical of our country that it is no longer possible to be a part of it,” Tolstoy explained yesterday. As a representative of the Russian Federation, we do not need to put up with this anymore, nor will we need to, he said.
After Tolstoy said late last week that he intended to brief a parliamentary committee on Russia’s plans on February 12, he confirmed today in response to an APA inquiry that this has not yet happened.
“We will inform everyone of our position in due course,” Tolstoy explained.
After Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe in March 2022, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was the last major European body where Russian parliamentarians could participate in deliberations and decision-making on an equal footing. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of this body voted in favor of resolutions condemning Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia was clearly not satisfied with these defeats in the vote, BTA reports.
Parliament Speaker Volodin also demanded yesterday that decisions in the OSCE PA be made only by consensus. This is also the case in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), he explained. In addition to Armenia, this Moscow-based organization includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.