Moscow should influence their protégés in Donbas – PACE

The priority of the situation in eastern Ukraine should not be lowered, Marieluise Beck (Germany, ALDE), Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said, reads the statement released by the PACE press service. "Serious violations of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement occur on a daily basis in both separatist-held regions, as reported on a daily basis by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM)," she noted. Marieluise Beck, who is now working on the report "Legal remedies to human rights violations on the Ukrainian territories outside the control of the Ukrainian authorities", sounded the alarm regarding the humanitarian situation in the separatist-held regions of Ukraine. In this regard, she reminded that the holders of de facto authority were legally responsible for the welfare of the population in the areas under their control, pursuant to the international humanitarian law. German MP noted that the de facto authorities clearly owed their power to the backing received from Russia. “It is therefore also up to Russia to ensure that the requirements of humanitarian law are respected by their protégés,” Marieluise Beck stressed.