By Burc Eruygur
ISTANBUL (AA) – Ukraine and the Baltic states on Tuesday announced that they will not participate in the upcoming Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) ministerial meeting in the North Macedonian capital Skopje due to Russia's participation.
“The presence of the Russian delegation at the meeting at the ministerial level for the first time since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will only deepen the crisis into which Russia has driven the OSCE,” said a statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
The statement said that Russia, by “resorting to blackmailing and open threats,” has blocked agreements made on key issues such as Estonia’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2024, adding that Russia has been keeping three Ukrainian OSCE officials in detention for more than 500 days.
“Russia has created an existential crisis within the OSCE and turned the organization into a hostage of its whims and aggression,” the statement said.
“We should focus our common efforts on how to save the OSCE from Russia, and not send messages about the possibility of returning to the forms of cooperation that existed before February 2022 to the state that has unleashed the largest armed aggression in Europe since the end of the Second World War and grossly violated all the principles of the Helsinki Final Act,” it added.
Separately, the foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also announced in a joint statement that they would not attend the meeting.
“For the past two years we have witnessed how one OSCE participating state has actively and brutally tried to annihilate another,” the statement said.
Saying that Russia’s war with Ukraine “blatantly violates international law, including the UN Charter, and constitutes an attack on the OSCE and its underlying principles,” the statement said Moscow has been showing “obstructive behavior” within the organization.
It further said that it regretted the decision to allow Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to attend the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Skopje, saying that this will only “provide Russia with yet another propaganda opportunity.”
Lavrov announced on Monday that Russia will attend the OSCE’s ministerial meeting on Nov. 30-Dec. 1 if Bulgaria allows the use of its airspace.