Question: This year Russia decided not to send a national delegation to the PACE winter session. How has this decision affected relations with the Council of Europe?

Answer: Indeed, the other day the leadership of the Russian parliament stated that Russia's decision to abstain from participating in the PACE plenary sessions remained in force.

As it is known, our delegation has not taken part in the activities of the Assembly since 2015. At the same time, interaction with the rest of the Council of Europe bodies - the Committee of Ministers, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the ECHR and many others - has not changed, active and normal work continues.

I hope that the Commission of the PACE Bureau on the role and mission of the Assembly established last December on the basis of the report of the head of the national delegation of Italy, Michele Nicoletti, will become the platform where a new stage of interaction between the Federal Assembly and the PACE will begin.

Question: How do you assess the current interaction with the Council of Europe? What conventions of the Council of Europe can be ratified this year?

Answer: Russia's cooperation in the Council of Europe has a multifaceted nature, it touches on a wide range of areas and it varies from sport to combating terrorism, from culture to protecting the rights of prisoners. The foundation for it is the legal base of the Council of Europe, the central element of which is the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Up to now, 224 international treaties (conventions, charters, protocols, agreements, etc.) have been adopted within the framework of the Council of Europe system on a wide range of legal issues in the fields of human rights protection, combating discrimination and xenophobia, civil and administrative legal cooperation, combating crimes, intercultural dialogue, health care and others. Russia has acceded to 64 legal acts of the Council of Europe and intends to continue to expand its participation in them.

The past year has become a kind of a landmark because our country has ratified six Conventions of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe Convention on the Counterfeiting of Medical Products and Similar Crimes Involving Threats to Public Health (the Medicrime Convention) is among them. It was ratified on December 29, 2017.

This list also includes the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism, which is a unique international legal instrument in countering the "financial aspects" of a terrorist threat. Seeing the 2018 World Cup in our country, we should mention the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events, which, inter alia, provides legal grounds for restrictions on the entry of football hooligans to Russia.

Russia is sure to continue to accede to the Council of Europe conventions. We also attach great importance to the development of sectorial cooperation in the Council of Europe, primarily in legal and law enforcement areas. Relevant mechanisms of cooperation have shown their effectiveness over the years. For example, Russia annually sends and receives hundreds of requests for mutual legal assistance and dozens of requests for extradition to and from the member-states of the Council of Europe through the channels of mutual legal assistance in criminal cases, which function on the basis of legal instruments of the Council of Europe. More than 100 million US dollars have been returned by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation from Switzerland alone thanks to these legal instruments over the past few years.

Question: At the end of June last year, Russia notified Strasbourg what it suspended payment of a part of its financial contribution for 2017 to the budget of the Council of Europe. What is the current situation with the payment of this part of the contribution? Will Russia remain a major contributor to the budget of the Council of Europe in 2018-2019?

Answer: The government decided to suspend the payment of a part of the contribution for 2017 to the budget of the Council of Europe because the Russian Federation was deprived of the right to participate fully in the work of one of the statutory bodies of the Council of Europe, namely the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. At the moment, there is no progress in the implementation of the only requirement of the Russian side which is the unconditional restoration of all the rights of our parliamentary delegation to the PACE. Accordingly, there are no grounds for changing the position on payments to the budget of the Council of Europe. As for our status of the major contributor, we have made no statements on our intention to opt out of this status, as, for example, Turkey did when the draft budget of the Organization for 2018-19 was approved.