PACE suspended Ruslan Kutaev’s membership in the platform for dialogue with the Russian opposition

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Petra Bair, decided to immediately suspend the membership of Ruslan Kutaev, former Deputy Prime Minister of the government of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in the PACE Platform for dialogue with Russian democratic forces.

According to Bair, the secretariat received several complaints about Kutaev’s non-compliance with the criteria of the PACE resolution, and after studying the evidence presented, the complaints were found to be justified. The final decision on Kutaev’s participation will be made by the Assembly Bureau at the next meeting.

The reason for the complaints was Kutaev’s statements in an interview with the Ukrainian YouTube channel “Rizni People” and the Breakfast Show channel of journalist Alexander Plyushchev. In them, in particular, he actually justified the “honor killings” of women, saying that “each family makes its own decision – to kill, bring home, marry,” and also blamed the Americans and “Zionists” for Putin’s rise to power. In addition, Kutaev spoke insultingly towards people from the Caucasus who openly declare their membership in the LGBT community.

A number of members of the Russian opposition platform have publicly dissociated themselves from Kutaev. Mikhail Khodorkovsky called its inclusion in the platform a mistake. Garry Kasparov published a statement from the Free Russia Forum condemning “all forms of anti-Semitism, racism and hate speech.” Dmitry Gudkov said that “anti-Semitism is unacceptable” and Kutaev “will have to explain his position.”

In an interview with Novaya Gazeta. Europe, commenting on the scandal, Kutaev said that he was misunderstood. According to him, he meant that some situations arise within the family, while others become possible because relatives have access to power and power resources. And he added that the most high-profile cases of persecution of women and LGBT people often involve families whose members themselves are in power or close to it.