The British government has denied visas to the Russian delegation that wanted to participate in the annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Birmingham in July, the vice-president of a Russian Senate committee denounced on Wednesday. .
“We immediately request the leaders of the Senate and the Russian Foreign Ministry to solve the problem of providing guarantees to the British side for the issuance of visas for our parliamentarians to participate in this important event,” said the deputy chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the Federation Council, Vladimir Dzhabarov.
All members of the Russian Senate are on the UK sanctions list.
According to the senator, the United Kingdom has informed those affected that it cannot grant visas to members of the Russian delegation, “whatever the reason for which they visit the country,” he said, according to the TASS official agency.
According to him, such “discriminatory actions” by the British against the Russian delegation “are a direct and flagrant violation of the 2016 OSCE Parliamentary Assembly declaration, which provides for mandatory access to all members of the Assembly who participate in any official meeting in a Member State’.
The head of the Russian Senate delegation sent a statement to the leaders and all members of the Parliamentary Assembly to warn them that preventing Russian participation “seriously undermines the credibility of the meeting and the organization as a whole.”
“And all the decisions of the session taken in our absence, including the final declaration, will not be recognized as legitimate by us,” Dzhabarov stressed.
