The European Parliament recognised Russia, on Wednesday 23 November, as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and “which is using means of terrorism” by adopting a resolution of the EPP, Renew Europe and ECR groups on this issue by 494 votes to 58 with 44 abstentions.
The EPP, Renew Europe, ECR, S&D and Greens/EFA groups - but not its co-chair Philippe Lamberts, who abstained - mainly voted in favour of the resolution. The Left was divided between rejecting the resolution and abstaining, and the unity of the ID group exploded with MEPs voting in favour, against or abstaining.
In a specific vote on whether to keep the phrase “Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism” in the resolution, MEPs were more divided: 329 voted in favour, 244 against and 27 abstained, but details of the votes were not recorded.
The European Parliament rapporteur on Russia, Andrius Kubilius (EPP, Lithuanian), welcomed the adoption of the resolution. For him, the Parliament’s recognition that Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism and uses means of terrorism “sends a clear political signal”. “Europe, Europeans do not want to remain passive when their big neighbour violates all humanitarian and international standards”, he warned, hoping that the European Commission and the EU Council would now develop new legal instruments to draw clear consequences with regard to the states recognised as using means of terrorism.
In its resolution, the European Parliament considers that the deliberate attacks and atrocities by the Russian Federation against the civilian population, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law “amount to acts of terror against the population and constitute war crimes”.
It calls on the EU and its Member States to develop an EU legal framework for the designation of states as sponsors of terrorism and states that use means of terrorism, “which would trigger a number of significant restrictive measure against those countries and would have profound restrictive implications for EU relations with those countries”. MEPs also ask the EU Council to consider adding Russia to such a list.
It also calls for the inclusion of the Wagner Group, the 141st Special Motorised Regiment, also known as the Kadyrovites, and other Russian-funded armed groups, militias and proxies on the EU’s terrorist list.
Finally, the European Parliament wants the EU and its Member States to take steps to initiate a complete international isolation of Russia.
See the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/47q
Cyber attack on the Parliament
Minutes after the vote on the resolution and for several hours, the European Parliament’s website was the victim of a “sophisticated cyber attack”, claimed by a pro-Kremlin group, confirmed the European Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola. “The availability of the website (was) affected due to high levels of traffic on the external network. This traffic is linked to a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack event”, also said the European Parliament spokesperson, Jaume Duch. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)