The Council of Europe is engaged in “openly Russophobic” activities and Moscow should declare it undesirable, Russian lawmaker Andrey Lugovoy has proposed.
Lugovoy, a member of the State Duma from the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR), has submitted a brief to the Prosecutor-General’s Office to consider banning the transnational organization in Russia.
“I have sent a request to the Prosecutor General asking him to give a legal assessment of the Council of Europe’s openly Russophobic policies and to recognize the organization’s activities as undesirable on Russian territory,” Lugovoy said on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.
The COE was established in 1949 by several Western European countries, with a mission to promote “democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Russia joined the organization in 1996. The council, as well as its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) are headquartered in Strasbourg, France.
While it may have been a net positive for Russia at first, Lugovoy argued, since 2008 the COE has become “an instrument of political pressure by the collective West,” and all of its decisions have had an “anti-Russian character and represent a threat to our constitutional order.”
Lugovoy listed the 2012 resolution condemning Russian bans on gay pride parades and the law banning LGBT propaganda targeting minors; the 5-year suspension of the Russian delegation in 2014, after PACE declared Crimea’s reunification referendum illegal; and the 2022 suspension of Russian membership and declaration of Russia as a “sponsor of terrorism.”
In the past two years, PACE has also adopted a resolution declaring Russian President Vladimir Putin “illegitimate,” and called for the “decolonization” of Russia.
In February 2022, 42 out of 47 members voted to suspend Moscow’s membership, citing the conflict in Ukraine. Russia condemned the “openly political” decision by which the nominally neutral body sided with the US and NATO, and withdrew from the COE on March 15 that year.
Russia has since withdrawn from 21 treaties it had joined as part of COE membership, including the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and rejected the jurisdiction of the ECHR.
Andrey Lugovoy is one of two Russians accused by the UK of poisoning former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. The second person wanted by London in the case was former businessman Dmitry Kovtun, who died in 2022 from Covid-19-linked complications, according to Lugovoy.