Tsymbaliuk: Active position of CoE could bring real difference to people in Crimea and Donbas

Ukraine hopes that the Council of Europe will take an active stance on support for the residents of the territories temporarily occupied by Russia, where massive human rights violations are recorded.

Ambassador Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna, made a corresponding statement at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting on Thursday.

“Our delegation believes that such an active position of the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the OSCE could bring real difference to the people in Crimea and in Donbas, who desperately need international solidarity and support,” Tsymbaliuk said in response to the statement made by Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejčinović Burić.

He drew Secretary General’s attention to massive human rights violations in the temporarily occupied Crimea, namely abductions, disappearances, intimidations of the local population as well as torture and restrictions on freedom of the media, demographic change and militarization of the peninsula.

“The same severe violations of the rule of law and human rights happen every day in the temporarily occupied regions of Donbas,” Tsymbaliuk added.

Ukraine’s Permanent Representative noted that a proper response to the ongoing Russian aggression “would also allow strengthen the standing and reputation of the Council of Europe as a defender of human rights, democracy and the rule of law on the continent.” He assured of Ukraine’s resolve to support the Secretary General’s every effort, which will be aimed at achieving these goals.

In 2014, in response to the occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the aggression in Donbas, the Russian delegation was deprived of part of its powers in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, including the right to vote.

In June 2019, the PACE unconditionally restored the powers of the Russian delegation despite Moscow’s failure to fulfill its international obligations, continuation of the undeclared war against Ukraine and the violation of the Statute of the Council of Europe.

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