”The senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation are forced to state that the repeated appeals to the leadership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA) and its members to return to an equal interparliamentary dialogue designed to help resolve the problems of developing regional co-operation in the area of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and to build a European security architecture remain unheeded.
Despite numerous appeals and proposals by the Russian delegation, the priorities of the OSCE PA leadership indicate that at present, instead of creating conditions for a constructive exchange of views and the formation of a unifying agenda, this platform is being used as a politicized instrument for the purposeful implementation of an anti-Russian course, including the deliberate distortion of the causal link between the events taking place in Ukraine.
Biased discriminatory approaches, double standards and total Russophobia, unpreparedness for substantive discussion, including on pressing issues of ensuring equal and indivisible security, testify to the extreme degradation of the OSCE PA as a mechanism for inter-parliamentary co-operation.
For many years, the OSCE PA has been ignoring problems related to the violation of the rights of national minorities in Ukraine and the Baltic States, the freedom of communication and education in one's native language, and has paid no attention to the blasphemous glorification of Nazis and their accomplices and the harassment and killing of journalists who express a position different from that of Brussels and Washington.
The delegation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation to the OSCE PA has been repeatedly deprived, under spurious pretexts, of the opportunity to continue dialog and to participate fully and equally in the work of the plenary sessions and governing bodies of the OSCE PA. In 2022, members of the Russian delegation were denied visas to attend the annual session of the OSCE PA in Birmingham and its fall meeting in Warsaw. In 2023, the senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma were denied adequate security conditions and visas to attend the OSCE PA session in Vancouver. The non-admission of the Russian delegation to these events predetermined the adoption of the only possible decision to suspend payments to the OSCE PA budget. This suspension has been used to deny its members the right to vote, thus preventing representatives of our country from participating in decision-making processes.
The final point in the emerging stalemate was Romania's demonstrative refusal to issue visas to members of the Russian delegation to attend the annual session of the OSCE PA in Bucharest in 2024. Such a decision demonstrated that confrontational tendencies and an atmosphere of intolerance prevailed over the common sense, spirit and values of this inter-parliamentary organization. This move by the Romanian authorities violated the principle of sovereign equality of participating States and the provisions of the resolution ”Unimpeded Access of Members of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Attending Any Official OSCE Events and Other Parliamentary Activities“ to the Tbilisi Declaration of the OSCE PA 2016.
The senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma are convinced that the application of restrictions on participation in OSCE PA events against parliamentarians expressing the will and interests of their people is unacceptable. It must be stated that under the current circumstances the possibilities for continuing constructive dialog in the OSCE PA have been completely depleted.
In this regard, the senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma consider it reasonable and legitimate to suspend the participation of the delegation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in the OSCE PA and the payment of the contributions of the Russian Federation to the OSCE PA budget. During the period of suspension, any action to amend the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly to the detriment of the Russian delegation will be deemed legally null and void.
The senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma express their readiness to return to work in the OSCE PA on condition that its leadership and a number of member States revise their Russophobic and discriminatory approaches to resolving pressing issues of European security, and also express the hope that sensible forces in the Assembly will show the necessary will to resolve the political and ideological crisis in the area of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in the interests of peace and stability on the continent“.
