State Duma speaker calls on post-Soviet security bloc to counter provocations in Syria

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO PA) to counter provocations in Syria aimed at derailing the restoration of peaceful life there.

"As you can see, the forces that aim at the escalation of tensions are not calming down, and provocations on Syrian territory continue. They are linked, in particular, with the attempts to violate the reviving peaceful life and destabilize the current achievements," Volodin, who is the assembly’s chairman, said at the opening of a CSTO PA session. "Our task is to do all that is possible to prevent the escalation of tensions on Syrian soil and do everything to prevent the world - that understands the responsibility for solving tasks to restore peaceful life in Syria - from being drawn into provocations that are frequently organized on Syrian soil today in order to derail all agreements and plunge Syria into war chaos again," he added.

"We should oppose it within parliamentary structures, national parliaments, so that what happened on Syrian soil - blood and sufferings - did not repeat," the State Duma speaker stressed.

Parliamentary heads from the CSTO member states are taking part in the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly session: Armenian National Assembly Speaker Ara Babloyan, head of the Chamber of Representatives of the Belarusian National Assembly Vladimir Andreichenko, and Kyrgyz Supreme Council Speaker Dastanbek Dzhumabekov, as well as parliamentary delegations from Tajikistan and Serbia, which is an observer at the CSTO PA.