“The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Serhiy Lavrov is not participating in this year’s ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is held under the presidency of Finland in Vienna.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Source: article “European truth”
Details: Until recently, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Serhii Lavrov, made frantic efforts to get out of the international blockade, including to participate in the OSCE meeting.
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A “multi-stage special operation” lasted more than a year to guarantee his invitation to the OSCE meeting. This was probably related to the early transfer of the meeting from the capital of Finland, which is presiding this year – which would then have to issue an entry permit to Lavrov – to the more “accommodating” Austria (however, in Helsinki it explained organizational considerations).
But despite all these efforts, a few days before the meeting, Moscow announced that Lavrov would not fly to Vienna, but instead would send his deputy there.
He also published an explanation article in “Russian newspaper” that Russia is no longer interested in the OSCE in its current form; that the organization, they say, has degraded and turned into a tool of the West, and assumed the “collapse of the OSCE”.
According to EuroPravda, in the end, Lavrov’s deputy Oleksandr Hrushko was present at the meeting.
In 2022, then-presiding Poland did not issue visas to Lavrov and the Russian delegation, thus not allowing him to the meeting. However, for the next meetings of the organization in 2023 in North Macedonia and in 2024 in Malta, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation received permission to enter.