Leonid Slutsky: “Russia is no longer going to take part in the work of the main structures of the Council of Europe against the backdrop of the continuation of the line of the EU and NATO countries towards the destruction of the pan-European humanitarian and legal space. This is the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The step is more than justified. The Council of Europe, to my great regret, has turned from a pan-European organization into a repeater of Washington’s unipolar attitudes and a “kingdom of double standards.” In recent years, Russia has faced only one-sided Russophobic approaches. Unfounded accusations were used, and sometimes even outright rudeness, which was repeatedly observed, in particular, in PACE.
We honestly tried to conduct a dialogue all these years. What did we hear in response? Monologues about the “villain-Russia”? Where have PACE and the Committee of Ministers been since 2014 with their European values and human rights standards, when they killed Russians in the Donbass, burned them in Odessa? The questions are rhetorical.
Any patience has a limit. Strasbourg has yet to realize the consequences of its policies. And it is not Russia today that is losing the Council of Europe, but the Council of Europe is losing the voice of the largest country on the continent.”
