VIENNA, July 2 (UPI) -- Russia announced Thursday it will boycott a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe because Ukraine-related sanctions have barred prominent lawmaker Sergei Naryshkin from attending.
The meeting, scheduled for Sunday in Helsinki, will bring together parliamentarians from 57 countries to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki accords, which led to the OSCE's creation..
Naryshkin said Moscow would send a delegation to protest a "violation of the principles of democracy."
He plans to attend a later session of the group's Parliamentary Assembly in Mongolia.
The Russian lawmaker was placed on a European Union blacklist in March 2014 because he "publicly supported the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine," and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, The Washington Post reported.
Ilkka Kanerva, the Finnish president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said Finland could not grant an exception to the ban.
"Even given the illegal sanctions decision of the EU, exceptions from them should apply to occasions of this kind," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Neverov told Russian media. "But this does not dissolve the most negative symbolism of this decision, and we definitely see it as unfriendly and inconsistent with principles of neighborliness."
