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Russian lawmakers mull statement condemning GDR’s annexation by FRG in 1989

A relevant order was issued by State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin to the parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs as it was proposed earlier in the day by lawmaker Nikolay Ivanov
East Berlin residents waiting to cross into the West Berlin at the new border crossing after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany, 1989 EPA/STR
East Berlin residents waiting to cross into the West Berlin at the new border crossing after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany, 1989
© EPA/STR

MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. Members of the Russian parliament mull drafting a statement to condemn the annexation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) by the Federative Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1989, a historic event commonly known as the reunification of East and West Germany.

A relevant order was issued by State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin to the parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs as it was proposed earlier in the day by Nikolay Ivanov, a lawmaker from the Russian Communist Party.

"Dear Sergey Yevgenyevich (Naryshkin), we were all sympathizing with you, when on January 26 at a news conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) you were refuting verbal assaults of PACE President Anne Brasseur, who accused Russia of ‘Crimea’s annexation'," Ivanov said, addressing Naryshkin on Wednesday morning.

"I propose that as a form of a retaliatory step you give order to the Committee on Foreign Affairs to prepare a statement condemning the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the Federative Republic of Germany in 1989," Ivanov said. "Moreover, unlike in Crimea, there was no nationwide referendum in GDR."

Speaking at a joint news conference with Brasseur earlier in the week, Naryshkin said why last April’s PACE decision to deprive the Russian delegation of its rights in the organization was wrong.

"PACE’s reference to Crimean events as a ground for its April decision was incompetent, since Crimea’s reunification with Russia took place basing on results of the most democratic procedure and it was a referendum, when 97% of citizens of Crimea voted in favor of reunification with its motherland Russia," Naryshkin said.

He also said that if one should follow the logic of those, who called that historic event the ‘annexation', it would be easy enough "for the authors of such logic to say that FRG annexed East Germany."

"Russia, however, stands firmly against such logic both in case with GDR and the Republic of Crimea," he said. "We (Russia) have been always speaking against double standards."

The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean peninsula, where most residents are Russians, signed reunification deals with Russia on March 18 after a referendum two days earlier in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

In the Soviet Union, Crimea used to be part of Russia until 1954, when it was gifted to Ukraine by Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev.