The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has supported a resolution on the death of Russian politician Aleksey Navalnyy, in which it called Vladimir Putin an illegitimate president of the Russian Federation.
This was announced by a member of the Ukrainian delegation to PACE, Ukrainian MP Yevheniia Kravchuk.
"In this resolution, the PACE clearly stated that since coming to power, Putin has been building a regime whose goal is to wage a war against democracy and reshape the European and world order established after the collapse of the former Soviet Union," Kravchuk said.
PACE called for
- officially recognise Putin's illegitimacy, as the amendments to the Russian constitution adopted in July 2020 have been declared illegitimate by the Venice Commission and the Assembly. These amendments allow the Russian dictator to remain in office until 2036;
- strengthen the sanctions regime against Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, as well as against the Lukashenko regime in Belarus;
- recognise the Russian Orthodox Church as a tool of Russian influence and propaganda that has nothing to do with freedom of religion and expression, and treat Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox hierarchy as a continuation of the neo-imperial ideology of the "Russian world";
- create an international mechanism for compensation for victims of Russian aggression against Ukraine, to which frozen Russian assets should be immediately transferred, and establish a special tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression against Ukraine;
- to ensure that Russia is held accountable for the systematic use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment suffered by thousands of prisoners in the Russian Federation, including Ukrainian political prisoners illegally detained in Russian prisons since 2014, as well as Ukrainian prisoners of war.
"In addition, the Assembly stressed that under international humanitarian law, Russian oil refineries should be considered legitimate targets of military attacks," the MP said.
In addition, the PACE also called on the United States, as an observer state at the Council of Europe, to ensure that the Senate bill on assistance to Ukraine is put to a vote without further delay or otherwise authorise the provision of the necessary military and other assistance to Kyiv.
The resolution was also amended to include language concerning the colonised peoples of Russia.