Russian Foreign Ministry: Council of Europe Committee of Ministers continues to intensify tension around Byelorussia

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On April 26, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers (CECM) approved response to the PACE recommendation concerning Belarus. The Russian leadership is disappointed with the document. “By approving such reports as this one, the CECM continues unfortunately to carry out faulty practice of last years which consists finally of participation in intensifying tension around Byelorussia, and attempts to exclude it from processes of the European cooperation,” is said in comments of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department released on April 27.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stresses that the Byelorussian presidential elections are non-objectively evaluated in the response, and “arguments of the Russian side, which were emphatically promoted at CECM, were not heard.” “The fact especially worries, that the April 26 decision was made by CECM with violation of consensus culture, demonstratively ignoring opinion of the side, which disagrees with position of the majority,” the Russian Foreign Ministry stated.

In mid-April PACE adopted resolution, in which it recognized outcomes of Byelorussian on March 19 elections to be falsified and appealed to the country’s leadership to hold re-elections.