No European organisation enjoys Russia's trust

The daily Latvijas avīze looks at Russia's relationship with European institutions in the wake of Russia's criticism of a resolution recently passed by the OSCE putting Nazi and Stalinist crimes on a par: "None of the European organisations enjoys Moscow's complete trust. The well-known Russian politician Mikhail Margelov complained some years ago in the Western press that the Council of Europe was being used by 'Latvian nationalists and Czech separatists'. In actual fact the Council has always gone out of its way to accommodate Russia, without expecting Russia to reciprocate. Moscow keeps on threatening to cut Russian payments (around 12 percent of the EU budget) or to resign from the Council of Europe and is delaying the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. And, as Sergei Lavrov once said, [it sees] the OSCE as a means to 'surround Russia'."

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