Iron Curtain will never separate the World – top Russian senator
Russia will not shy away from international parliamentary cooperation and will continue other forms of collaboration with the world, because no one is currently interested in the country’s isolation, the Upper House chair has said.
The return of the “Iron Curtain” is out of question in the modern world, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said at a major press conference on Tuesday. “There are many reasons for this. Neither the world is interested in Russia’s isolation, nor is Russia interested in such scenario,” she noted, adding that “the world has become global.”
Matviyenko also said that by maintaining membership in international parliamentary bodies and panels, Russia would retain the possibility of telling other nations about its position and back it with arguments.
The complicated situation pertaining now in international parliamentary bodies is a temporary situation caused by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the top senator noted. “We will continue cooperation. In complicated conditions parliamentary dialogue helps us to understand each other better and find ways to alleviate tensions,” she said.
Describing the situation in Ukraine, Matviyenko voiced the opinion that the dire developments there were enabled by the permissiveness of Western nations in relation to the Kiev regime. “The authorities in Kiev are allowed to do whatever they want. Their Western patrons are turning a blind eye on horrific crimes against civilians - black is described as white and white is said to be black.If our Western partners, the United States from the very beginning, had taken a harsher stance and enforced the international treaties that ban the use of military force against civilians nothing of this kind would have happened,” the Upper House speaker stated.
Sufficient pressure from the international community could have forced the Ukrainian authorities to start negotiations with their own people and find a mutually acceptable solution, Matviyenko maintains.
At the same time, the Upper House chair advised her colleagues not to spend their summer vacations abroad over fears of provocations. “Better be safe than sorry,” she said, adding that similar recommendations also applied to all civil servants.
Currently about ten Russian senators are included in blacklists sanctioned by the European Union, the USA and several other countries, like Canada and Japan. These include the Upper House speaker, officials from the defense and international relations committee and also senators from Crimea and Sevastopol.
Matviyenko’s warning echoes an official release in April from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which asked all citizens who travel abroad to be careful when choosing the destination of their trips as they might be detained and extradited to the US for a biased trial on trumped-up charges.
The ministry backed its statements with examples of transport company owner Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko who got 25 and 20 years in prison respectively. Both Russians were convicted as a result of sting operations and the main argument for the prosecution was the testimony of undercover agents, not material evidence. Both men pleaded innocent in court and continue to insist on their innocence to this day.
