Russia will no longer participate in the Council of Europe, the TASS news agency quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying on Thursday.
The ministry said in a statement that NATO and European Union countries were undermining the European body designed to uphold human rights, rule of law and democracy.
“Russia will not participate in the transformation by NATO and the EU obediently following them of the oldest European organization into another platform for incantations about Western superiority and narcissism," the ministry said, according to Russian media outlet RIA News. "Let them enjoy communicating with each other without Russia.”
Unfriendly states, abusing the majority in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, continue the line of destroying the organization and the entire humanitarian and legal space in this part of the world, according to the Foreign Ministry.
"The course of events is becoming irreversible. Russia does not intend to put up with these subversive actions carried out by the collective West in line with the imposition of a "rules-based order" to replace the international law trampled by the United States and its satellites," the message added.
Russia joined the Council of Europe in the winter of 1996, and since then the country has had a moratorium on the death penalty. Two years later, Moscow ratified the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms (ECHR).
Several times Russia was deprived of the right to vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, despite the fact that it is one of the five largest sponsors of the organization. After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the Council of Europe suspended Moscow's membership.
Russia's membership in the Council of Europe, in accordance with the charter of the organization, will terminate at the end of the current financial year.
