According to TASS, representatives of the "old" European countries, including France and Germany, have been pointedly refraining from criticizing Moscow at the current summer session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA), member of the Russian delegation senator Vladimir Dzhabarov told TASS on Monday.
"The old Europe - as we call it - in particular, France and Germany, have been pointedly refraining from criticizing Russia on every occasion," said Dzhabarov, who is the First Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee. "Very few have been responding even to attempts to blame Russia for the MH17 crash [in Donbass in 2014 - TASS], the war in Ukraine, disgraceful actions in Syria and all that," the Russian senator said, adding that "only Lithuania and Switzerland keep responding - but as we all know, Switzerland has a special relationship with the Ukrainian delegation."
According to Dzhabarov, "even Poland, who has been highly critical of Russia in the past years, has reduced the number of negative remarks concerning Moscow." "While countries such as France and Germany have left hatred against Russia out of their statements," the senator noted.
"Europe clearly is waiting for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, so it affects all things," Dzhabarov went on to say. "They are waiting before making a decision as to where to go so that they don’t shoot blanks," he noted. "If the meeting results in at least a small success, I believe that Europe, the European and US media will respond positively," he said.
The OSCE PA session, taking place in the German capital of Berlin, involves about 300 lawmakers from 57 OSCE member states. State Duma (lower house of parliament) Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy heads the Russian delegation.
