Viacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) in an interview to Rossiya 24 TV channel, pointed out that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe should return Russia’s contributions to the Assembly for the years when it was deprived of the right to vote, parliament’s website reported.
According to the chairman, since 2014 Russia was deprived of the right to vote yet it kept paying its contributions (€32.5 mio per annum) to PACE in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Since “we were not given the opportunity to participate, we want the Parliamentary Assembly to repay the funds to Russia,” he said. The aggregate amount is about RUR 10 bln and Russia has “a reason to raise this question,” Volodin noted.