MINSK (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, the OSCE PA’s General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions backed a draft resolution criticizing the situation with human rights and freedoms in several countries, including Russia and Belarus. On Friday, the OSCE PA Committee on Political Affairs and Security adopted the draft resolution on Restoration of the Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity of Ukraine proposed by the Ukrainian delegation, which called on Russia to revise its decision to reunify with Crimea and to stop the "aggression" in Donbas.
“The Russian delegation is not going to support two resolutions that were reviewed at this session. The first one is the resolution on the so-called restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the second one is the resolution on the situation in Eastern Europe," Pyotr Tolstoy, the deputy speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament and the head of the country’s delegation to OSCE PA, said at the OSCE PA's plenary session.
"Both documents are linked by confrontational rhetoric and an attempt to give lessons to other countries in the form of an ultimatum.”
The draft resolution on the situation in Eastern Europe was proposed by a Swedish lawmaker. The resolution criticizes Russia for its alleged involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, as well as for reported persecution of LGBT people in Russia's Chechen Republic. The document also targets Belarus for "a system and structural nature" of human rights abuses, violations of electoral procedures as well as for limitations in the issues related to the freedom of assembly and freedom of media. The resolution also calls on the country's authorities to free and rehabilitate all people detained during the protests that took place across the country earlier in the year.
