ADDRESS of Verkhovna Rada Chairperson, Chairperson of Verkhovna Rada Committee on Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of Verkhovna Rada Committee on European Integration to foreign states and Internationa! parliamentary assemblies as to violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms and intensification of political persecution by Russian Federation

(Press Service)
The Russian Federation continues to breach human rights and turn into a totalitarian state. By violating international obligations and terms of the international law, the Russian Federation estranges itself from the ideals of freedom and democracy and its international obligations. Dedicated ruining of remainders of the supremacy of law in favor of further aggression upon a sovereign European state does not only entails repressions against Russian citizens and citizens of neighboring states, but also puts at risk the existence of democracy in Europe and all over the world.

On August 25, 2015, the Russian Federation crossed the border that separated a state with inconsiderable legal culture from a totalitarian state with political repressions and political prisoners. North Caucasian Military Court of the city of Rostov-on-Don (the Russian Federation) passed a sentence upon Ukrainian citizens Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko, having imprisoned them for 20 and 10 years respectively.

That illegal and politically motivated court reprisal was the culmination of the prejudiced trial that lasted for a year and was of particular cynicism and legal nihilism. The court farce became an open abuse of the supremacy of law, human rights and freedoms.

The Ukrainian citizens were ostensibly deprived of the right to consular protection of their state. Following the occupation of the Crimean peninsula, the Russian authorities refused to acknowledge Ukrainian citizenship of the Crimean residents, having forcefully provided the population of the occupied territory with Russian citizenship in abuse of all terms and principles of international humanitarian law and obligations of the Russian Federation as an occupant state that derive from Article 45 of the Hague Convention of 1907 and Article 47 of the Convention on the protection of civilians during the war of 1949.

Russia ignores numerous calls of the world community to stop political persecutions, refuses to follow the provisions of the four resolutions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted in 2015 and calling on the Russian Federation to release all the hostages and illegally detained persons.

The military court was not stopped by having no right to pass a sentence as to actions outside the internationally acknowledged territory of the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation followed only the desire to break the patriotic spirit of the Ukrainians, make them and other citizens not ready to stand Russian aggression, become the silent victims of unlawfulness and totalitarianism.

The fabricated cases against Ukrainian citizens Savchenko, Sentsov, Kolchenko and other political hostages have finally proved the choice of the Moscow’s ruling regime in favor of the separation from democratic values and civilized international cooperation.

The turning of the Russian Federation into a totalitarian and aggressive state, whose major ideology is the policy of repressions, revisionism and militarism — is of direct threat to stability and democracy in Europe and the world on the whole.

Therefore, we call on the foreign parliaments and international parliamentary assemblies to:

—support Ukraine’s efforts to release Ukrainian citizens illegally arrested on the territory of the Russian Federation;

—strongly condemn illegal sentences and unlawful arrests of Ukrainian citizens Nadiya Savchenko, Oleh Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Mykola Karpiuk, Akhtem Chyihoz, Ali Asanov, Mustafa Dehermendzhy, and others;

—take all possible diplomatic measures to as soon as possible release people’s deputy of Ukraine, member of Permanent delegation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Nadiya Savchenko, who has diplomatic immunity, and also all Ukrainian citizens illegally kept on the territory of the Russian Federation;

—address the governments of their states demanding taking all political and diplomatic measures to counteract the aggression and totalitarianism developing in the Russian Federation, to increase the pressure inter alia to introduce personal sanction lists to release illegally kept Ukrainian citizens and returning Russia into the path of the international law;

—punish the guilty of rude violation of human rights and crimes against humanity since the start of the Russian aggression upon Ukraine;

—intensify international monitoring of the situation with the observance of human rights and freedoms in the Russian Federation and on the territories it occupied, and rapidly respond to any violations;

—demand that the Russian Federation fully observe its obligations, including the provisions envisaging the release of all hostages.

04 September 2015,18:08