STRASBOURG, October 1 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - The Chairman of PACE Monitoring Committee Stefan Shennah has urged members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to investigate war crimes committed in Ukraine, and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
“We need to investigate all the war crimes which have been perpetrated so far, without exception. And the perpetrators must be held to account,” Shennah said at the PACE debate on the crisis in Ukraine on Wednesday.
He also noted that “durable, permanent ceasefire” is of paramount importance, as well as dialogue “between Ukraine and its neighbor Russia.”
Shennah called to provide the observers from the OSCE and from the Council of Europe with free access to investigate into the reported crimes in Ukraine.
“The country still needs a reform, but it also needs a stability on the economic front, on the security front, as well as on the political front,” Shennah said, adding, that the reforms, that Ukraine needs so badly today, include decentralization, minority rules and protection of human rights.
Since mid-April the Ukrainian government has been conducting a military operation against independence supporters in eastern Ukraine who refused to acknowledge the new government that came to power after a coup in February. Kiev authorities and independence supporters of eastern Ukraine agreed on a ceasefire on September 5 at a Contact Group meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk.
The conflict has claimed thousands of lives, and, as Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said earlier on Wednesday, Russia listed 12,000 people as victims of war crimes in southeastern Ukraine.
