STRASBOURG, January 30. /TASS/. The Ukrainian parliament must give explanations over the attack supposedly by a Ukrainian lawmaker on members of the Russian delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, a PACE source told TASS on Friday.
The attacker supposedly was a Ukrainian lawmaker, but not a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the assembly. There are reports and photos on Facebook, the source said, adding that the information in the Internet needed additional checking.
The Ukrainian parliament will be asked to clarify the situation. PACE Speaker Anne Brasseur has clearly formulated the assembly’s position the incident is inadmissible. There are radicals and extremists in any country, but what happened will not be of benefit for anybody, particularly Ukrainians, the source said.
Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov and his first deputy Ivan Melnikov, who were members of the Russian delegation to the PACE session, were attacked in Strasbourg on January 26. Ukrainian parliament member Dmitry Linko claimed responsibility for the incident. He wrote on his Facebook site that he had arrived for the PACE session to support demands against the Russian delegation. Linko said he, together with his companion, poured paint onto Zyuganov, who is 70 years old, and struck him several times. Melnikov confirmed the fact and expressed outrage that nobody prevented the attack that took place near the building of the Council of Europe.
Brasseur on behalf of the PACE apologized to the Russian parliamentarians and promised to find out who had committed the offence.