Strasbourg, April 28 (Interfax) - The Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has referred a letter to the PACE leadership, saying that PACE's English translation distorts Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's speech at the PACE session and needs to be corrected immediately.
Ahead of a discussion of the causes of mass famine (holodomor) in Ukraine in the 1930s, set for Wednesday, PACE posted Yanukovych’s answers to questions about whether he sees the famine as a genocide of the Ukrainian people, Russian delegation leader and chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachyov told the press.
"The issue took an unexpected, unclear and, mildly speaking, scandalous turn ahead of its discussion," Kosachyov said.
Yanukovych allegedly said, according to the English translation, that his government could not give an answer to the question whether the famine was a genocide of the Ukrainian people, Kosachyov said. What he actually said was quite different, he said.
Yanukovych said, Kosachyov claimed, that it would be wrong to describe the famine in the 1930s as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
"Recognizing the famine as a fact of genocide in relation to this or that nation would be incorrect and unfair, we think. It was a common tragedy, shared by the nations, which were once members of a single Soviet Union," Yanukovych exactly said.
"In the opinion of Russian parliamentarians, it was not just a technical fault, but a deliberate attempt to mislead the PACE members ahead of Wednesday’s discussion of this issue," Kosachyov said.
In its official letter to the PACE leadership the Russian delegation proposes "restoring the authentic translation immediately on the PACE official website, and launching an inquiry into the incident," Kosachyov said.
