Viktor Vovk, the co-chairman of Ukraine's parliament group on inter-parliamentary relations with Austria, said he had submitted his resignation on Friday over Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl earlier in August.
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st August, 2018) Viktor Vovk, the co-chairman of Ukraine's parliament group on inter-parliamentary relations with Austria, said he had submitted his resignation on Friday over Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl earlier in August.
"I cannot see a possibility to continue fulfilling my duties and announce my resignation from the post of the co-chair of the group on inter-parliamentary relations with Austria, and am leaving the group," Vovk said in a statement addressed to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy.
The lawmaker said he no longer saw Austria as an impartial international mediator.
"Unfortunately, after Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl's demonstrative invitation to her wedding of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she barely knows, as well as shameful pictures of minister Kneissl making a deep curtsey to Putin ... the good name of Austria suffered a heavy blow in Ukraine," Vovk said.
On August 18, Putin attended the wedding of Kneissl and entrepreneur Wolfgang Meilinger in the southern Austrian province of Styria in personal capacity. The Russian president was invited to attend the ceremony during his visit to Vienna on June 5.
