Ukraine official slaps Russian delegate at Black Sea nations assembly
A Russian delegate was taken to the hospital for a checkup Thursday evening after initiating a scuffle with a Ukrainian lawmaker at a parliamentary meeting of Black Sea nations in Ankara, Turkey, according to media reports.
Valery Stavitsky, the secretary of Russia’s delegation, snatched a Ukrainian flag out of the hands of a Ukrainian member of parliament, Oleksandr Marikovski, while the latter was taking a selfie in the corridors of the building where the meeting took place.
Marikovski then chased the Russian official and slapped him in the face, making his glasses fall — but winning back the flag, video of the incident shows.
Stavitsky was then taken to a hospital to be examined, Russian media reported, quoting a representative from Russia’s embassy in Ankara.
The incident took place on the margins of a tense meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in the Turkish capital.
Earlier on Thursday, a brawl erupted inside the meeting room after members of the Ukrainian delegation took out a Ukrainian flag while the deputy head of the Russian delegation, Olga Timofeeva, was speaking.
Turkish parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop, who was chairing the meeting, intervened and asked that the Ukrainian representatives be escorted out of the room.
Şentop later apologized on Twitter for the “unfortunate and unacceptable” incident, which he said “disrupt[ed] the peace environment Turkey is trying to achieve.”
Turkey has tried to position itself as a middleman between Kyiv and Moscow over the war in Ukraine, brokering a key deal allowing Ukraine to export its grain through the Black Sea last July — which is currently endangered because Russia has threatened to walk away from the agreement.
PABSEC is one of the few international forums in which both Ukraine and Russia are still active members.
In February, a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna saw a large number of delegates walk out of a meeting during a speech from a Russian representative. Some delegates held a Ukrainian flag behind the Russian delegate.
