The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation has called the September 17 decision by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CM) calling for Russia to remove all troops from Ukraine “worthless.” The announcement was made by the ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich, reports Ukrainska Pravda, September 20, citing the ministry’s press service.
” A number of the provisions in the September 17 decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on this issue have no relation to reality. There are no Russian troops in Ukraine,” Lukashevich announced.
He also stated that “the CM has neither the mandate nor the tools to make judgments on such matters or, especially, to make similar declarations.”
“We consider these passages of the text as having been dictated to the CM from the outside and pushed through by the ideological majority during voting,” he added.
According to Lukashevich, “the decision ignored the main issue — the CM’s responsibility for the persistent refusal of Ukrainian authorities to stop the massive violation in the country of norms of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including investigations, according to its rules, of tragic events that have taken a large number of human lives.”
“Because of these reasons the CM’s decision is worthless and has only propaganda value for its authors, who are not ashamed to misuse the high authority of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in their attempts to disrupt the delicate process of national reconciliation in Ukraine,” Lukashevich concluded.
