How Russia suffered a severe diplomatic defeat: Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been blocking the world’s largest regional security organization, the OSCE. But at a meeting in Skopje, Russia had to back down. (translation in comments)
by cito
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*Translation*:
It’s dripping from the ceiling in the conference center in Skopje. The first puddles appear under the tables, two security guards with radio buttons in their ears and guns under their jackets look on helplessly at the mess. A little later, a cleaning crew arrives with blue buckets and tries in vain to sweep away the debacle. But the drops from the ceiling pipes have long since turned into a steady trickle.
Two strong men tear the cladding off the wall with a great roar to get to the source of the problem. This is unfortunate, because now the journalists here in the press center can barely follow the speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which is the top act of the two-day Ministerial Council meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the capital of North Macedonia on this Thursday morning.
So while the men are boldly hammering on dilapidated pipes, the Russian foreign minister can be seen on the screens in the large hall next door, rattling off his prepared diatribe. In the translation headphones, it is only possible to understand individual sentence fragments in the infernal noise, but they are enough. It is the usual Lavrov mix of lies, cynicism, distortion of history and victim worship.
Moscow’s chief diplomat castigates Western tolerance for the alleged “neo-Nazi regime” in Kiev, to which the EU now also wants to open its doors. “Welcome to Nazis”, sneers Lavrov. The Western states alone are to blame for the OSCE crisis. “The organization is on the brink of the abyss,” says the man whose regime is held solely responsible for the desolate state of the OSCE by his fellow foreign ministers in the room.
When the water in the press center is finally stopped, Lavrov is also finished. He has exceeded his speaking time by a factor of five. The Russian leaves the room immediately so as not to have to listen to the Danish Foreign Minister’s retort. Meanwhile, in the press center, the large ventilation system on the ceiling begins to shake ominously. Who knows what the two men have done in their eagerness to repair it.
**Dissolving the union is considered impossible**
So things are going anything but smoothly in Skopje this Thursday and Friday. The world should survive, one might think, because what – pray tell – is the OSCE? After all, the world’s largest regional security organization with more than 1.3 billion people, diplomats would be able to recite in their sleep. The organization emerged from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which ended in 1975 with the legendary Helsinki Final Act. It has 57 member states, including all European countries, the successor states of the Soviet Union, the USA, Canada and Mongolia.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the OSCE is one of the last international organizations in which Russia and its accomplice Belarus are still members. As all decisions are made by consensus, meaning that these two countries must also agree, they cannot be excluded. However, dissolving the association and re-establishing it without Moscow and Minsk is considered impossible.
This would mean that an important international forum for dialog, in which negotiations between Russia and Ukraine could possibly take place at a later date, would no longer exist. The Germans, the Americans, many Western Europeans, but also the Central Asians, therefore want to preserve the OSCE at all costs, even at the risk of being shown up by the Russians.
Because they are ruthlessly exploiting their veto power. Three Ukrainian OSCE employees have been in Russian captivity for over 600 days. Moscow has been blocking the budget since 2021, it has prevented Estonia from taking over the chairmanship of the organization next year, and it tried until the end to boycott the contract renewal of the German Secretary General Helga Schmid and the three OSCE representatives for democracy, media freedom and minorities. Their contracts expire this Saturday.
“The perfidious game of the Russian government is and was to destroy organizations that rely on peaceful coexistence and cooperation with the brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticized the Russians in Skopje. Lavrov was not in the conference room during her speech. The minister was apparently only in the room “when he himself was speaking, but not to listen to others”, Baerbock taunted.
In protest at Lavrov’s appearance, the foreign ministers of the three Baltic states and Ukraine boycotted the meeting in Skopje. Bulgaria withdrew the Russians’ overflight permit at the last minute, so that Lavrov and his entourage had to take a five-hour detour via Turkey and Greece. “A dangerous stupidity”, scolded the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The delegations’ dinner on Wednesday evening was classified as “unofficial”, so Lavrov did not have to be invited.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken came instead, but he flew on to the Middle East the next morning – without meeting the Russian. “They chickened out,” scolded Lavrov at a press conference on Friday morning, “they are afraid of an honest conversation. It’s plain cowardice.”
The harsh attacks were apparently intended to hide the fact that Russia and Belarus had just suffered a bitter diplomatic defeat. Until the very end, they had tried to win over at least some OSCE member states with threats and persuasion in order to avoid being completely isolated by their veto. But in the end, the score was 55 to 2, with none of the other 55 member states wanting to side with Moscow. Even the Central Asians around Kazakhstan were tired of being patronized by the Russians in the end.
And so Russia and Belarus agreed to a compromise on Friday afternoon so as not to stand alone. Malta will take over the chairmanship of the OSCE this weekend and the contract of Secretary General Schmid and the three OSCE representatives will be extended by nine months instead of the usual three years.
When asked whether his organization had entered into horse-trading with the Russians for this, the host, Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, replied diplomatically. “Consensus is the DNA of the OSCE,” he said on Friday afternoon, “have we gone beyond the principles or commitments of our organization? I would say no.”
Rusia has long given up on diplomacy.
A cancer on humanity