Critics express anger at Switzerland for hosting Russia ‘war criminals'
Ms Valentina Matvienko, speaker of Russia's Upper House of Parliament, delivering a speech at a three-day gathering of global parliamentarians in Switzerland.
PARIS - More than 200 Kremlin critics and former political prisoners have expressed outrage at the visit of a high-ranking Moscow delegation to Switzerland, accusing Europe of hosting 'war criminals' despite the invasion of Ukraine.
Opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin fear that more than three years into Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, the West might be ready to start bringing Russia in from the cold and revive relations with the Kremlin.
An open letter signed by Kremlin critics – including former political prisoners Vladimir Kara-Murza, Oleg Orlov and Ilya Yashin – accused Switzerland of hosting some top Putin allies, including the speaker of the Upper House of Parliament, just as the Kremlin presses ahead with its war against Ukraine.
A delegation led by Ms Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Upper House of Parliament, arrived in Geneva on July 24 to take part in a three-day gathering of global parliamentarians that began on July 25.
The delegation featured a dozen figures including Mr Pyotr Tolstoi, deputy speaker of the Russian Parliament's Lower House, and Mr Leonid Slutsky, head of the Lower House's international affairs committee.
Ms Matvienko, Mr Tolstoi and Mr Slutsky are under EU and international sanctions.
The trip appears to be the highest-profile visit to Europe by Russian parliamentarians since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
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'While Geneva hosts war criminals Matvienko, Tolstoi, and Slutsky, Russian troops continue to launch missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. Civilians, children, and women are dying,' the letter's signatories said.
The letter also said that Italy helped facilitate the visit by authorising the flyover of the delegation's plane.
Ms Matvienko, Mr Tolstoi and Mr Slutsky are 'key figures of the Putin regime, directly responsible for unleashing the aggressive war against Ukraine, destroying democratic institutions, and large-scale repressions within Russia', it said.
'Their participation in international events in Switzerland should have been prohibited, and they themselves detained.'
The Kremlin critics demanded to know how and why Mr Putin's allies had been allowed to participate in events in Geneva.
They also called for an investigation to determine whether Swiss laws were violated.
'We are convinced that neutrality is not an excuse,' the signatories said.
Separately, the team of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny called the visit a 'disgusting creeping lifting of sanctions'.
'All efforts to put pressure on Putin's regime and isolate those who incite and profit from the war could be rendered meaningless if Europeans do not realise what is happening right now,' Navalny's team said on X. AFP
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