Responsible stance on Ukraine can avert global catastrophe

BELGRADE - The dramatic situation in Ukraine underlines the deep crisis affecting entire Europe, and MPs in European countries must approach this issue in a responsible manner to prevent the catastrophe of the 1914 Great War from repeating, participants of a Russian-Serbian scientific conference have said.

The illegitimate Kiev authorities are violating the Geneva accord, they are not disarming radicals and are conducting an operation aimed at punishing the people of eastern Ukraine, who want the country to be federalised and are defending their rights, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said Tuesday opening a conference titled Balkan Dialogue 2014 at Belgrade's Hyatt Hotel.

With full responsibility, I declare that this is a true genocide against the Ukrainian and Russian peoples - in the 21st century, Naryshkin said, adding that more than 30 people have died in a fire in a trade union building in Odessa.

The biggest problem is that the whole world has been ignoring this for some time now, and this should not be happening in modern Europe, which survived the horrors of fascism, he stressed.

We are on the verge of catastrophe, and I have to disappoint those who think that this is happening a long way away from them - they are either blind or susceptible to an anti-Russian hysteria, which is evolving into a pro-fascist propaganda, the Russian State Duma speaker said.

Naryshkin said that parliamentary and civil society diplomacy must ensure dialogue as a way out of the crisis, but that those who have risen to power illegitimately (in Kiev) should be condemned universally.

Nazism emerges where moral hygiene is non-existent, he warned.

Many past tragedies could have been averted by...