Council of Europe’s silence on Moscow terror attack ‘shameful’ – Foreign Ministry

The European rights body is discrediting itself by ignoring last week’s massacre, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said

The Council of Europe has disgraced itself by failing to condemn the recent Crocus City Hall terrorist attack near Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

The massacre at a concert venue last Friday claimed over 140 lives. According to the Russian official, the lack of reaction to it by the “self-purported conscience of Europe” is just “the latest shameful episode in the history of this organization.”

“This line of behavior by Strassburg proves once again the deep degradation of the Council of Europe today, which has drowned in political hypocrisy and double standards,” Zakharova told RIA Novosti on Friday.

The council’s website and social media do not appear to mention the mass murder in Russia. Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric has not reacted to it on her X (formerly Twitter) account. But she expressed solidarity with Iceland over renewed volcanic eruptions earlier this month, and with Germany over a deadly motorway crash near Leipzig on Wednesday.

As she rebuked the organization’s silence, Zakharova contrasted it with the outpouring of sympathies to the Russian people from ordinary citizens of European nations. She added that the head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council (PACE), a related body, did not hesitate to speak up.

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President Theodoros Rousopoulos said he was “deeply shocked” by the news of the Crocus City Hall attack and stressed that there was no excuse for “targeting civilians whoever and for whichever purpose does it.”

Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe in March 2022, after 26 years of membership. Moscow has accused the organization of abandoning its humanitarian mandate and morphing into an instrument of US geopolitical ambitions used to enforce the so-called ‘rules-based order’. The situation in Ukraine was a major source of Russian tensions with the body for years before open hostilities began in February 2022.