STRASBOURG, September 29 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has to prevent such developments as the crisis in Ukraine instead of just observing them, Tiny Kox, a Dutch senator and PACE rapporteur said Monday.
"We are going a long current affairs debate [on Ukraine]," Kox said at the autumn session of the PACE in Strasbourg, highlighting the violent developments in the country this summer.
"It happened during summer that over 3,000 people got killed in this great country, and over a million people fled to Russia, to western parts of Ukraine, that cities were destroyed after they were bombed and attacked. And that all the agreements that were taken before in February in Kiev and later in Geneva, other decisions… did not mean anything and the war developed during this summer. This should give the Assembly a thought - we are there to prevent it, not to see it happen," Kox stressed.
He reminded that the crash of Malaysia Airline flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in eastern Ukraine on July 17 was a result of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
The plane "Which probable was shot by someone," as Kox said, was carrying 298 people on board and they all died. Most of the victims were Dutch citizens.
PACE's fall session is underway in Strasbourg and will end on October 3. The Assembly will discuss the crisis in Ukraine, countering neo-Nazism and addressing Islamic State (IS) threats, among other topics, though Russia, which suspended its cooperation with the assembly in June, will not be taking part.
Ukraine has been engulfed in a violent internal conflict since mid-April, when Kiev began its military operation against independence supporters in the southeastern regions of the country. According to the United Nations' estimates, some 3,000 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded since the start of the offensive.
Kiev authorities and southeastern Ukraine's militia agreed on a ceasefire on September 5 at a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine held in Minsk. Since the establishment of the ceasefire regime, the conflicting sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating the agreement. However, the OSCE stated earlier this month that the truce was generally holding.
