“This morning, after a long break, the Russian delegation entered the meeting room of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in order to protect the interests of our voters, our country. And, of course, we consider only the full-format and equal participation of our delegation,” said the head of the delegation, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy
Petr Olegovich
.
However, he stated that the attempt to challenge Russian credentials was quite expected.
“The Russophobic minority in the Assembly is doing its best to put a spoke in the wheels and prevent Russia from returning to this European platform because otherwise, the anti-Russian sanctions will shatter into pieces meeting common sense. Moreover, the Americans are not very satisfied with the return of Russia, respectively, a group of parliamentarians from Ukraine, Great Britain, and Georgia are repeating the accusations against our country from the same training manual,” he stated.
“A decision on the credentials of the Russian delegation will be taken in the afternoon on Wednesday. Depending on what it will be, we will decide whether to remain in PACE or not,” said Petr Tolstoy.
As for the demarche of the Ukrainian delegation, which the day before initiated the consideration of more than 200 amendments, and has already left the meeting room today, the parliamentarian called it “provincial behavior”.
“In my opinion, this is such a provincial style of petty, children's resentments, hysterics, and attempts by scrumping escapades to provoke Russian deputies and senators. But we treat this philosophically, we are now worried about more important things: the opportunity to return to PACE with full scope of rights and to make our voice heard, and the myths and clichés about Russia to be destroyed. And this is why we came today to Strasbourg,” concluded Petr Tolstoy.
