Duma appeals to world parliaments to hold consultations on Ukraine crisis
MOSCOW. May 13 (Interfax) - The Russian State Duma has adopted an appeal to the parliaments of the world and international parliamentary organizations calling on them to hold consultations to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine.
The Duma members passed the appeal headlined 'To the parliaments of the world and international parliamentary organizations in light of the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine' in a 443-0 vote with one abstention on Tuesday. The idea of this appeal belongs to Duma Chairman Sergei Naryshkin and the leaders of the four parliamentary factions.
"The deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federal Assembly are calling on the parliamentarians of the world to do all they can to stop mass violence and an impending humanitarian disaster in Ukraine," it said.
The State Duma said it is outraged by what is sees as the current Kyiv authorities' steps escalating civil war and brutal killings of peaceful civilians by radical nationalists.
"It is necessary to bring up the issue of immediately holding the officials responsible for the deaths of peaceful Ukrainian civilians liable. At the same time, members of such nationalistic organizations as Right Sector, Svoboda, and some others, occupying government positions in Ukraine must be deprived of their offices, and these organizations must be dissolved," it said.
The State Duma also called for immediately holding inter-parliamentary consultations to develop approaches to help de-escalate tensions and ensure the security of Ukrainian citizens.
"The draft roadmap proposed by the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship on May 7, 2014 deserves attention," it said.
The Duma proposed forming an international contact group for Ukraine on the forum of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Europe "to stop civil confrontation and bring the country out of a political crisis."
The exact number and the names of those burned alive in Odessa are still unknown, the estimates vary from several dozens to several thousands of people, "which shows the authorities' unwillingness to say the truth and bring those responsible to justice," it said.
Dozens of people in Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and other populated areas in the Donetsk region have been killed under the guise of the so-called antiterrorist, and in fact punitive, operation, and hundreds have been injured and maimed in southeastern Ukraine, the Duma said.
"Millions of Ukrainian citizens are hostages to the Kyiv junta and potential victims of massive human rights abuses. They cannot be sure of their personal security only because they want to speak and teach their children their native Russian language and be free citizens in a free country arranged based on a federal principle and guaranteeing their ethnic and cultural rights," it said.
This understandable desire of the Russian-speaking people seeking Ukraine's federalization "is being brutally suppressed by the self-declared Ukrainian government, which is easily exposing all those disagreeing with its actions to slaughter by Right Sector armed groups and cynically justifying these and other crimes by the slogan of 'Ukraine's unity'," the Duma said.
The "criminal Kyiv regime's" actions may lead to even more victims in the near future, it said.
The statement says that the Russian parliamentarians share the position expressed in the Geneva statement of April 17, 2014 that the constitutional process ongoing in Ukraine should be comprehensive, transparent and responsible and should immediately launch a broad national dialogue taking into consideration interests of the people of all regions and ethnic backgrounds, all Ukrainian political and social forces, and the outcomes of the referendums that were held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on May 11 this year, which show "the desire of the people of these regions to defend their rights."
"It is obvious that such a dialogue is possible only after the military actions are immediately halted, the neo-Nazi gangs are fully disarmed and isolated, the pressure on political parties and Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputies is ended, and Western political forces stop encouraging the Kyiv junta. Any other way leads to the collapse of Ukraine's statehood," the Duma said.
