MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) – By refusing to attend the inter-parliamentary Contact Group for Ukraine, which was to meet on the sidelines of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Geneva, Kiev wanted to block the group’s work, Alexei Pushkov, a senior Russian parliamentarian, said Thursday.
“This decision is aimed at blocking the work of the group established within the [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or] OSCE. This is another example of Ukraine’s behavior on the global scene, when decisions are made, many of the participants agree to the group's work, and Ukraine itself agrees, and then it turns out that it actually did not agree. In other words, [there is an] irresponsible government, irresponsible leadership, which was once again proved by Ukraine’s behavior," the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma (Russian lower house) told Russia-24 news channel.
The Russian delegation will work at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which is due to open on October 3, and Kiev decisions “will have no impact on our stance,” Pushkov added.
The International Contact Group for Ukraine was created on the initiative of Russia's Duma (lower house of parliament) Speaker Sergei Naryshkin at a previous session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
