The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has expressed serious concern over the possible banning of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, Krym.Realii reported.

“The Mejlis is an important tool for the representation and the emancipation of the Crimean Tatar people. It is absurd to label the Mejlis as an extremist organization just because they openly oppose Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea,” this was said by PACE co-rapporteurs, Axel Fischer and Jordi Xuclà.

The PACE also …

The wreckage of the plane that crashed near Smolensk that killed Polish President Lech Kaczyński in April of 2010 will not be handed over until the investigation concerning this criminal case is complete, as was reported by the official representative of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Markin.

"Of course, the wreckage of the plane contains evidence of the criminal case and cannot be given back to Poland until all investigations have been completed, this is in …

The EU Diplomacy Chief stated that member states support the five key principles for building relations with Russia. Italian and Hungarian Foreign Ministers spoke out against the automatic prolongation of sanctions against Moscow.

On March 14, at the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, discussed with the Foreign Ministers of the member states the five principles for cooperation with …

On both sides of the contact line, the distance between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and pro-Russian fighters was reduced to a few hundred meters. The Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, said that the Army of Ukraine and the Russian fighters have to move further away from the contact line in the Donbas region.

According to mass media, in some places the distance between the opponents is reduced to only hundreds of meters. "They are so …

In 2015 Ukraine distributed a total of 34 billion hryvnia ($1.2 billion)  in the form of pensions and other welfare benefits to the inhabitants of the occupied parts of the Donbass region. The representative of Ukraine in the political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Roman Bezsmertnyi, reported this data on Radio Freedom.

According to Bezsmertnyi, the budget funds work on the Russian economy. "500 billion is the country's budget and 34 billion went nowhere, in the 'hole'. In the end, …

US Senator John McCain is worried that Russia will turn its resources and attention to Ukraine following the Kremlin’s announcement that the main part of Russian troops will withdraw from Syria, Glavnoe reported with reference to Ukrainian TV channel “112”.

According to McCain, Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria destroyed enough of the opposition to ensure that the al-Assad regime will stay in power.

The US Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee also accused the White …

A Russian district court in Ryazan sentenced the leader of the local PARNAS branch, Yuriy Bogomolov, to 250 hours of community services for insulting judges on social media, RIA Novosti reported.

According to investigators, in August of 2015, Bogomolov posted on the Russian social network site VKontakte, in which he “publicly insulted and degraded the honor and dignity of the authorities” of the judges of the Moscow District Court of Ryazan, as well as judges of the Ryazan regional court “in …

The Press Secretary of the President of Ukraine, Svyatoslav Tsegolko, wrote on Facebook that reports of Mikheil Saakashvili's dismissal as Governor of the Odessa region are untrue.

"The President had a telephone conversation with Mikheil Saakashvili about the future projects of the development of Odessa region. All 'messages' on the resignation of the Head of the Odessa Regional State Administration are not true," he wrote.

Earlier, Saakashvili’s advisor, the former Consul General of Georgia …