Great Britain refused to issue visas to the Russian delegation for participation in the July session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. This was announced by the first deputy head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov, he is quoted by Interfax.

“Given that all members of the permanent delegation of the Federal Assembly of Russia are on the UK sanctions list, we promptly requested the leadership of the assembly, as well as the Russian Foreign Ministry, to work out and resolve the issue of providing guarantees by the British side for issuing entry visas to the UK for our parliamentarians to participate in this important inter-parliamentary event.”

According to him, Britain replied that it could not issue visas to members of the Russian delegation, "for whatever purpose they visit the country."

The 29th annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly will be held on July 2-6 in the UK in the city of Birmingham.

On April 24, OSCE employees were detained in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. On April 22, Deputy British Ambassador to the OSCE Deirdre Brown criticized Russia for refusing to renew the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine: “And now we have received disturbing reports that Russian proxies in the Donbas are threatening mission personnel, equipment and premises and that Russian forces captured the SMM,” Brown said.

At the end of March, Russia blocked the extension of the OSCE mission in Ukraine. On April 1, the mission stopped the work that it had been conducting in Donbass since 2014. In mid-April, the work of the mission was banned in the so-called DPR and LPR , and the employees of the organization were required to leave the territory of the self-proclaimed republics. The "LNR" stated that they had detained two employees of the OSCE SMM on suspicion of treason.