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- From Russia with Lavrov: How the Minister's first visit to the EU since the beginning of the EUSSR went
From Russia with Lavrov: How the Minister's first visit to the EU since the beginning of the EUSSR went
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has paid his first visit to an EU country since the start of the special military operation. The diplomat took part in the annual meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers in Malta. At the plenary session, the diplomat pointed out that the OSCE has long maintained a "sepulchral silence" about the crimes of the Kiev authorities. In his opinion, the organization has been in crisis for several years, whereas it could become one of the points of gathering interests of all members of the European space. Nevertheless, the expert community believes that it is important for Russia to remain in the OSCE in order to convey its position to Western countries. Izvestia reports on the meeting in Malta and the problems of the organization.
For the first time in almost three years, Lavrov arrived in an EU country
On December 5, the 31st meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) started in Valletta. Malta took over the chairmanship of the organization from Northern Macedonia in January of this year. The country's leadership immediately outlined its priorities: finding new candidates for the OSCE's four key leadership positions (Chairperson, Secretary General, ODIHR Director and Representative on Freedom of the Media), agreeing on the organization's budget and selecting its Chairmanship for 2026.
Also in January, the island nation's Foreign Minister Jan Borg noted that he would do everything necessary to maintain the OSCE's viability. For example, member states have been unable to agree on a regular budget since 2022. In these discussions, Russia, for its part, advocates a consensus approach to drawing up the OSCE's financial commitments.
The Russian delegation at the meeting was headed by Minister Sergei Lavrov. This is the first visit of the Russian diplomatic chief to an EU country since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Despite a ban on Russian planes using the airspace of EU states, the minister's plane was allowed to land in the Maltese capital on the night of December 4. The route of Sergey Lavrov's plane passed over Turkey and then along the coasts of Egypt and Libya. In the end, the flight took more than six hours.
The loud news on the eve of the event was the announcement that the visa issued earlier to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had been canceled: "The Maltese issued a visa. But today, almost right before the flight... withdrew their own decision and canceled the visa, citing 'circumstances beyond their control' as the reason," Zakharova commented on the situation in her Telegram channel. In mid-November, a senior EU official told reporters that EU ministers would not boycott Sergey Lavrov. The unnamed diplomat quoted by foreign media noted that they did not do so at the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro in November and will not do so now.
Nevertheless, some EU countries have expressed their dissatisfaction with the participation of a Russian representative in the OSCE meeting. A few days before the ministerial meeting, it became known that Lithuania had downgraded its representation at the event. Instead of the Foreign Minister, Rasma Ramoshkaite, director of the Foreign Ministry's Department for UN Affairs, International Organizations and Human Rights, went to Malta. Vilnius even considered a complete refusal to participate in the event, but it was important for the country to retain the right to vote.
Some countries are trying to demonstrate the boycott not only in politics, but also in the media sphere. For example, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky refused to answer questions from Izvestia correspondents after learning about their nationality.
- Are there any questions in English? - asked the minister's representative when he went to the press, but when he heard that journalists from Russia were planning to ask questions in English, he began to lead Lipavsky away, saying that his schedule did not allow him to continue communicating with the media.
Izvestia correspondents received the same refusal from the NATO representative at the OSCE meeting: "Are you from Russia? I can't comment," he said.
At the same time, the host party did not allow such discrimination against Russian journalists. All the staff of the venue politely tried to help journalists from Lavrov's pool with all their questions.
The Ukrainian crisis was discussed at the first OSCE plenary session
Sergei Lavrov was among the last to enter the conference room. He greeted his Swiss counterpart, Inazio Cassis, by the hand. The Russian minister sat between the foreign ministers of Romania and San Marino.
It is also noteworthy that the chairs of Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken were placed in such a way that they could avoid direct eye contact. Both were on the same side of the table, but at different ends. This detail seems particularly important given that just a few days ago was the 35th anniversary of the day when George W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announced the end of the Cold War in Malta.
On December 2-3, 1989, less than a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Malta Summit was held, where then US President George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, announced the beginning of a new turn in US-Russian relations and put an end to the Cold War era. At the time, the press considered the meeting the second most important after the Yalta Conference of 1945.
At the beginning of the first session, Jan Borg addressed the participants. Exactly at the moment when he greeted the attendees, a heavy rain began to fall, the sound of which drowned out the Minister's words. Immediately after Borg's opening speech, the floor was given to Andriy Sibiga, the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. In general, the topic of the conflict in that country was expectedly the subject of most of the delegates' speeches. However, Russia is not convinced that the OSCE, as well as the United Nations, can contribute to the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. In mid-November, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large for crimes committed by the Kiev regime, said that "a modern diplomat can no longer blindly trust the structures that have lost their main dignity - impartiality and unbiasedness - and have turned from investigators into propagandists.
- Western countries, the Chairmanship, the Secretary General and all OSCE institutions, which are concerned about human rights on every occasion, are keeping a sepulchral silence, looking at the actions of the Nazi Kiev regime, which since 2017 has passed a series of laws exterminating the Russian language in all spheres: in education, in the media, in culture, in art. And recently it banned the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church," Sergey Lavrov said in his speech.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meeting with Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Juraj Blanar on the margins of the 31st Ministerial Council meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE Ministerial Council), 5 December 2024.
At the same time, the minister noted that in the current conditions of profound changes in the balance of world forces, the OSCE could become "one of the points of gathering the interests of all members of the European space." "But no one in this room would ever think of using it for this purpose," Sergey Lavrov emphasized, in whose opinion NATO and EU members "have put the OSCE on the sidelines of political processes."
In general, negative and even aggressive assessments of Russian actions were heard in the speeches of many Western politicians during their speeches.
The OSCE crisis
Sergey Lavrov again drew attention to the fact that the OSCE as an organization is undergoing a crisis, noting the degradation of the institution.
- The organization has been in a very deep crisis for a number of years. It was created on the principles of equality, taking into account each other's interests, searching for a balance of such interests. And the most important principle of the OSCE is consensus as the basis of all its work. This principle was undermined many years ago, and as a result no documents have been adopted by foreign ministers for years, unlike the practice that always existed in previous years, when consensus was respected," Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following his work in Malta.
Nevertheless, despite criticism of the organization's effectiveness, expert circles note that it is still important for Russia to continue its membership in the OSCE.
- It is not certain that Russia's position will be heard and accepted by Western countries, but, of course, we should take the opportunity to talk about it again, and maybe even start some kind of discussion around Russian positions," RIAC Research Director Andrei Kortunov said.
At the same time, if in the case of relatively neutral Malta Russia managed to carry its position on the conflict in Ukraine, it may be more difficult to do so in the next few years. In September, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said that Finland, which will take over the chairmanship in 2025, is promoting confrontational approaches to the Ukrainian issue, which could finally bring the situation in the OSCE to a deadlock.
One of the countries being considered for the chairmanship of the organization in 2026 is Switzerland.
- We do not have many pan-European organizations in which Russia is currently actively involved. The OSCE is probably the most representative, the most legitimate organization that unites all European and a significant part of Eurasian countries, so participation in this organization is an opportunity to articulate one's positions and state one's points of view. Of course, there is a lot of anti-Russian sentiment in the OSCE, nevertheless, it is one of those opportunities that should not be neglected," says Andrei Kortunov.
According to the expert, the problems of the organization lie in the fact that its status has not yet been defined. It is not an interstate structure: there is no charter of the OSCE, which would have to be ratified by the parliaments of the participating countries, and it is not an international NGO. In his view, this amorphous legal status also affects the work of the organization: it cannot adopt decisions binding on participating States. However, as practice shows, if something is agreed upon within the OSCE, a document or a number of documents may be adopted. These decisions are then implemented by participating States and taken seriously by national governments. But if no agreement can be reached, everything is reduced to a mere exchange of views.
