Moscow, Jan. 16 – Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Federation Council committee on international affairs, said he regrets that European parliamentarians are not ready for dialogue with Russia.
"We can only sincerely regret the fact that the European parliamentarians have not shown readiness to look for real dialogue formats with Russia," Kosachev said in his blog.
Kosachev believes cautious signals have recently been coming from Europe to stop the confrontation and the unwinding of the sanctions “spiral.”
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, said: ‘We don’t want to be against Russia, we want political cooperation with Russia.’ She also spoke against freezing the ‘Russia-NATO document.’ Stoltenberg supported her, saying that NATO does not want confrontation with Russia, but wants constructive relations,” the senator said.
Kosachev said the European Parliament’s call on the Council of the European Union to adopt further restrictions on Russia and apply them to the energy and financial sectors is discordant with these statements.
“They are accusing Russia of all possible forms of aggression and warfare. The deputies are also asking the European Commission to prepare and publish ‘within two months a communication strategy on combating the Russian propaganda campaign against the EU, the eastern neighbors of the EU, and Russia,” Kosachev said.
Analyzing the document prepared by the European parliamentarians, he pointed out the part dealing with a potential threat posed by Russia to the European Union and the ungrounded accusations that Russia is not fulfilling the Minsk obligations.
“The conclusion made in the European Parliament resolution stating that there are no obstacles, including legal, to the supply by the EU members of defensive weapons to Ukraine looks especially militant. The European parliamentarians thus discourage those who are trying to look for dialogue with Russia, not confrontation, even in the most cautious form,” the senator said.
Kosachev said he is convinced that parliamentary diplomacy is much more flexible than official diplomacy. “It should offer interaction models and look for points of contact and solutions to difficult problems, not hand out sentences. In other words, they expect to shield the general public in Europe (and even in Russia, which is in itself unrealistic) from ‘inconvenient’ information coming from Russian sources. Nothing should violate ‘European consensus,'” Kosachev said.
Nevertheless, Kosachev said he is hoping that wisdom, positive ideas and dialogue will eventually prevail. “Although we should understand that no one guarantees that. The demand for confrontation remains, and that means those who are interested in overcoming this crisis have a lot of work to do,” he said.
