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The Russian Federation Council plans to adopt the statement "On the situation linked to Russian participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe" and state the absence of grounds for sending an application for participation in the assembly’s work at the next session. 

"In this situation the members of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation see no grounds for sending a corresponding application to confirm the powers of the Russian delegation in the PACE for the next session in 2019," according to the draft statement, a copy of which TASS has at its disposal.

The senators confirmed the readiness to continue a constructive dialogue with the national parliaments that are members of the PACE, as well as with the bodies and institutions of the Council of Europe, including the Parliamentary Assembly "for the benefit of returning the Council of Europe to the positions of an international organization which was initially founded based on the principles of full equity of its members and respect for common European democratic values."

On January 9, State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoi reported that the State Duma received a letter from PACE Secretary General Wojciech Sawicki with a proposal to send a Russian delegation to the assembly’s winter session which starts on January 21 in Strasbourg.

The Russian delegation in the PACE was stripped of the right to vote in April 2014 due to events in Ukraine and Crimea’s integration with Russia. In 2015, the PACE twice studied the issue of restoring the Russian delegation’s powers, but sanctions were only tightened then. In response, the Russian delegation refused to work under such conditions, and in 2016-2018 it did not send an application to confirm its powers.