MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on recognising the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism

B9‑0487/2022

European Parliament resolution on recognising the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism

(2022/2896(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Ukraine and Russia,

– having regard to the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism of 27 January 1977,

– having regard to the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism of 16 May 2005,

– having regard to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings of 15 December 1997,

– having regard to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 9 December 1999;

– having regard to the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism of 13 April 2005;

– having regard to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 9 December 1948,

– having regard to the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949,

– having regard to UN Security Council Resolution 2341 on threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts, adopted on 13 February 2017,

– having regard to Council Common Position 2001/931/CFSP of 27 December 2001 on the application of specific measures to combat terrorism[1],

– having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 2580/2001 of 27 December 2001 on specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities with a view to combating terrorism[2],

– having regard to the Directive (EU) 2017/541of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2017 on combating terrorism and replacing Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA and amending Council Decision 2005/671/JHA[3],

– having regard to its resolution of 11 March 2021 entitled ‘The Syrian conflict – 10 years after the uprising’[4],

– having regard to its resolution of 25 November 2021 on the human rights violations by private military and security companies, particularly the Wagner Group[5],

– having regard to the resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of 13 October 2022 on further escalation in the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine, which declared the current Russian regime as a terrorist one;

– having regard to the decisions of the Parliaments of Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Czechia recognising the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism;

– having regard to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s declaration of 17 March 2022, which called for the world to acknowledge the Russian Federation as a terrorist state;

– having regard to the declaration of the Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe of 14 March 2022, which classified the Government of the Russian Federation’s actions in Ukraine against innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure as ‘state terrorism’,

– having regard to Rule 132(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas in particular since Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has continued to promote, finance and conduct acts of terrorism against political opponents and nation states;

B. whereas as a means to gain power, in September 1999, Putin and his former KGB operatives orchestrated bomb attacks on apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, killing over 300 people;

C. whereas under Putin’s orders, the Russian Federation has been engaged in a campaign of terror, including when it utilised brutal force targeting civilians during the Second Chechen War and completely destroyed the city of Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, resulting in many innocent men, women and children being killed or wounded;

D. whereas many of those who opposed Putin’s vicious dictatorship, including journalists, politicians, activists and foreign leaders – most notably Anna Politkovskaya, Viktor Yushchenko Boris Nemtsov, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Sergei Protazanov, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Alexey Navalny, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Natalya Estemirova, Sergey Magnitsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Boris Berezovsky, Dzhokhar Dudayev and Zelimkhan Khangoshvili – have been assassinated or have faced attempts on their lives; whereas Russian operatives have targeted people who have opposed Putin and his puppet Ramzan Kadyrov in Russia and abroad, including on EU and NATO territory, including by means of internationally prohibited nerve agents;

E. whereas in August 2008, the Russian Federation invaded Georgia, indiscriminately targeted civilian infrastructure and religious sites and terrorised the entire country in order to subvert democratically elected leaders and subjugate an independent and sovereign country;

F. whereas according to reports from international investigative bodies and national special commissions, the Russian Federation is directly responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014, which killed all 298 passengers and crew, and for the crash of Polish Air Force Flight 101 in Smolensk, Russia, in April 2010, which killed all 96 people on board, including the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, Polish Government officials, senior Polish and NATO military commanders and members of the Polish Parliament;

G. whereas active duty intelligence officers of the Russian Federation were involved in ammunition depot explosions at Bulgarian military depots in 2021 and in Czechia in 2014, the latter of which resulted in the deaths of two Czech citizens and extensive material damage;

H. whereas since the Russian Federation entered into the Syrian Civil War in 2015, its forces have repeatedly terrorised civilians by attacking targets such as markets, medical facilities and schools, and by using chemical and cluster munitions;

I. whereas the Government of the Russian Federation provides financial, political, military and material support to Assad’s regime in Syria, which has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the US, and which has committed grave atrocities against its own population; whereas the Russian Federation provides similar support to other brutal regimes around the world, including North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua and Eritrea;

J. whereas the Russian Federation spreads terror around the globe using private military networks of mercenaries, such as the Wagner Group; whereas the Wagner Group relies on the support of the Russian Federation and its Ministry of Defence in order to advance the foreign policy objectives of the Russian Federation, including in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Mozambique and Libya, where they have generated insecurity and incited violence against innocent civilians, including confirmed cases of torture and executions;

K. whereas since 2014 and the beginning of the illegal occupation of Crimea, the Government of the Russian Federation has been terrorising Crimea’s population, in particular Crimean Tatars;

L. whereas since the beginning of the full-scale military invasion in late February 2022, the Russian invaders have already used more than 4 000 different missiles against Ukraine and have shelled Ukrainian territory more than 24 000 times, destroying tens of thousands of civilian objects and 40 % of the country’s critical energy infrastructure, which has severely affected the civilian population in advance of the upcoming winter; whereas as part of these attacks, two Russian-produced rockets hit the village of Przewodów, which is in the territory of Poland, a NATO member and EU Member State, killing two Polish citizens;

M. whereas credible reports indicate that numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity have been planned and ordered by the command of the Russian Armed Forces, including extrajudicial killings, abductions, sexual violence, torture and other atrocities, and have been committed in both newly occupied and previously occupied territories, including the Kyiv (Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka and Hostomel), Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine; whereas such terrorist methods of waging war, sanctioned by the Russian leadership and army command, are a part of the strategy of intimidation and destruction of Ukraine as a nation; whereas such actions are carried out exclusively with terrorist intent, are orchestrated by Putin’s regime using the existing state machine of the Russian Federation and are carried out through regular and irregular military structures that involve persons with criminal pasts and foreign mercenaries;

N. whereas during the siege of Mariupol, the Russian Government created a large-scale humanitarian crisis during which, according to preliminary data, more than 22 000 civilians died and 95 % of the city was destroyed; whereas a well-known tool of the Russian regime is the mass forced deportation of Ukrainian citizens, including children, to the territory of Russia by passing them through filtration camps;

O. whereas the Russian Federation has no respect for its own fallen soldiers, leaving them in the field or even cremating their bodies in Ukraine and Belarus in order to avoid having to send them back to Russia and risk popular dissent against the war;

P. whereas Russia continues to use nuclear blackmail and the threat of nuclear strikes, and has been shelling the facilities of Ukrainian nuclear power plants;

Q. whereas the terror of the Putin regime is directed not only against the Ukrainian State and the Ukrainian people, but also against the EU and the entire civilised world; whereas at the present moment, Putin’s state machine has already crossed the line of sponsoring terrorism and has de facto turned into a fully-fledged terrorist organisation that is trying to impose its totalitarian ideology on the world through violent methods;

R. whereas methods of terror used by Putin have broad support within the whole of Russian society, including the media, academia, the culture and sporting world and among ordinary people, who are united behind their leader against a ‘common enemy’;

S. whereas on 14 March 2022, the Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Zbigniew Rau stated that the Government of the Russian Federation’s actions in Ukraine against innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure are ‘state terrorism’;

T. whereas on 17 March 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for the world to acknowledge the Russian Federation as a terrorist state;

1. Expresses its deepest outrage over atrocities and coordinated acts of terror, including the indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, forced deportations, the use of banned ammunitions, attacks against civilians trying to flee conflict areas via pre-agreed humanitarian corridors, executions of civilians, sexual violence, forced displacements and the targeting of residential areas and civilian infrastructure, such as energy facilities, hospitals, schools, shelters and ambulances in Ukraine, Syria, Georgia and Chechnya, as well as the targeted assassination and torture of political opponents of Putin’s regime in the territory of the Russian Federation and abroad; expresses its condolences to the victims of the terrorist policies of the Russian Federation and to their families; calls for frozen Russian state and private assets to be used as a mean of compensation for the terrorist acts committed by the Russian Federation and on its behalf, in particular those recently committed in Ukraine;

2. Declares the Russian Federation to be a terrorist state and recognises the abovementioned actions of the President, Government, Parliament and other bodies of the Russian Federation as acts of terrorism; states therefore that all official bodies of the Russian Federation, in particular the President, the Ministry of Defence and the Russian army, should be treated as a terrorist organisation, with all of the ensuing consequences; calls therefore on the Council to recognise the Russian army and its proxies, such as the Wagner Group, as an organisation involved in terrorist acts, to apply Council Common Position 2001/931/CFSP and to consider additional restrictive measures under the sanctions regime established by Council Regulation (EC) No 2580/2001; calls on the Member States and the international community to prosecute persons involved in acts of state-sponsored terrorism, including instigators from the highest circles of the Russian elite;

3. Encourages the European Council and the EU Member States to recognise Russia as a terrorist state and implement effective measures to comprehensively isolate it internationally by terminating all cooperation with Russia, freezing contacts with its representatives and expelling Russia’s ambassadors, including from international organisations and forums, such as the UN Security Council and the G20; underlines the need to update official EU policy towards Russia and its cooperation framework to reflect the new reality; encourages the EU and the Member States to establish an appropriate legal mechanism to allow the recognition of states as terrorists for committing terrorists acts, which would involve applying substantial measures against such states, including serious diplomatic and economic restrictions, as well as measures against third states cooperating with these terrorist states; considers that such a legal mechanism would significantly strengthen the EU’s common security and defence policy and would enable stronger coordination of global actions by the collective West, bearing in mind that such legislation already exists in the United States and Canada;

4. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Organization for Migration, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Criminal Court, the Nordic Council, the Government and Parliament of Ukraine, the President, Government and Parliament of the Russian Federation and the governments and parliaments of the G20.