The French Appeal Court decided to close the DPR Representative Center in Marseille on March 23. DPR Foreign Affairs Minister Natalia Nikonorova commented on the situation.
«We have no doubt that such a decision was made under pressure from the Ukrainian authorities, which have filed lawsuits against the center in France since 2017. Our like-minded people have already managed to resist this pressure: in September 2018, a court hearing was held in a higher court of the city of Aix-en-Provence, which ended in favor of the DPR Representative Center, whose activities were recognized as legal, and the petition to close the center was rejected.
However, the Ukrainian government continued its provocative activities and filed a new claim against our center at the French Appeal Court. The head of the Representative Center, Mr. Hubert Fayard, together with lawyers, persistently and carefully worked on the arguments of the defense. But, unfortunately, after two and a half years of fighting for the center, the Appeal Court decidet to close it.
We are extremely concerned that the Ukrainian government exerts pressure on the French authorities, since a repeated request for a lawsuit against the Representative Center after the Supreme Court of Aix-en-Provence officially recognized its activities as legal is nothing more than explicit an attempt to interfere with the work of the French judicial system,» Natalia Nikonorova said.
She also noted that French like-minded people, including the head of the Center Mr. Fayard, intend to continue the struggle for the organization.
«We, in turn, will also do our best to support our friends in France and other European countries, which make a very significant and important contribution to the dissemination of truthful and objective information about the Donetsk People’s Republic abroad.
We will not stop our work to break the information blockade, we will make every effort to eliminate Kiev’s monopoly on coverage of events in Donbass. And we can already confidently say: our voice is becoming louder and more visible in the international arena, despite attempts to counter this on the part of Ukraine,» the Minister said.
