Lavrov and OSCE Finally Talk

Remarks and answers to media questions following talks with Secretary-General of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Fernando Sinirlioglu

As Lavrov reviews in his opening remarks, Russia hasn’t communicated with the OSCE for quite some time—three plus years. Apparently, it was helpful that the new Secretary-General of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Fernando Sinirlioglu is an old friend of Lavrov’s. That communications are being reestablished is a good sign, but an overall sea-change in attitude will need to occur by the vast majority of OSCE members for any positive work to be done. Lavrov will have more details on that in his remarks and the Q&A:

Ladies and gentlemen,

We had a substantive and frank conversation with OSCE Secretary General Sinirlioglu. We have known each other for a long time. We know our Turkish colleague as an experienced diplomat, including from his work as Turkey's Permanent Representative to the UN, UN Special Coordinator for Afghanistan and in positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey.

We talked about the situation in which the OSCE is now. We have to admit that in recent years, the leaders of this organisation have come up with various pretexts for not coming to Moscow. The previous visit of the OSCE Secretary General, German citizen Helmut Schmidt, took place in June 2021. Then, in mid-February 2022, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, who chaired the organisation, visited us. Since then, there have been no contacts at this level.

Therefore, we appreciated the decision of the new Secretary-General, who had no doubt that communication with the leading members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was mandatory and important for the performance of the functions of the head of the Secretariat.

The legacy that Sinirlioglu inherited cannot cause envy. Because, by and large, over the past years, the West forbade itself to enter into dialogue with us. It extended this ban to the international organisation that is the OSCE. There were contacts, but not at the level that was characteristic from the very beginning of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act. Such actions by the West, which deliberately destroyed the principle of consensus and did everything to ensure that the OSCE abandoned consensus and turned into a Ukrainianised instrument for "educating" the Russian Federation–-all this led to a deep institutional crisis. We set out our assessments in detail in our keynote speech at the OSCE ministerial meeting in Malta in December 2024. They are available for review.

50 years ago, as the Conference, before it was transformed into an organisation, the pan-European process became a unique regional platform for contacts between East and West during the Cold War. An "all-weather mechanism of communication" was created, as we say. Moreover, the dialogue on all three baskets–-military-political, humanitarian, economic and environmental–-did not stop, even in the most critical times, including 1999 against the backdrop of the barbaric bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO countries. Diplomatic work in Vienna was not interrupted, although the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo directly had a hand in the bombings, their justification and the search for a pretext for them.

I would like to reiterate that we consider today's visit by the Secretary-General as a symbolic step towards return. This is a long journey. But Secretary-General Sinirlioglu wants to return to the origins of this organisation. We will support him in every possible way on this path.

Today we talked about the OSCE's potential to adapt to modern geopolitical realities and become part of a new security architecture. Initiatives are emerging that are no longer about Euro-Atlantic concepts, but about the Eurasian approach, about the Eurasian architecture. This would be logical, given the geography and connectivity of our vast continent. Of course, we want to revive the principle of indivisibility of security, as it was enshrined at the highest level at the OSCE summit in Istanbul in 1999 and reaffirmed at the OSCE summit in Astana in 2010–-the indivisibility of security and the sovereign equality of states. I hope that the Secretary-General's experience and energy will help us move against the ongoing efforts of the Westerners and continue to use the OSCE in their own interests, ignoring both the UN Charter and all the basic principles of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

They are trying to use the organisation's resources to help NATO and the European Union continue to support the Kiev regime, to justify and provide information and political support for the provision of large-scale military and other assistance to this regime, completely turning a blind eye to Kiev's gross violations of its obligations in the UN and the OSCE, primarily to ensure the legitimate rights of ethnic minorities and human rights in a broader sense. They are being grossly violated against Russian-speaking and ethnic Russians in Ukraine, as well as Hungarians, Bulgarians, Poles and representatives of other nationalities.

We talked about how it will be possible to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Our position is clear. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasised his readiness for negotiations, the principles that cannot be ignored if we want to reliably resolve this crisis by eliminating its root causes. He set this out in detail in June 2024 in his speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry. I also spoke about this on February 12 with US President Donald Trump. Subsequent contacts between Russian and American representatives, in addition to the main task of normalising relations between the two great powers, while maintaining all the contradictions, confirmed that the dialogue cannot be interrupted. We will be ready to discuss the Ukrainian issue with everyone who is sincerely interested in helping in this.

We also talked about the fact that the OSCE has three main areas ("three baskets"). They have not been functioning very regularly for a long time, thereby depriving the participating countries of the opportunity to discuss important, rather than opportunistic, development issues. These are the economy, the environment, the solution of humanitarian, social and security issues.

I hope that the experience of the OSCE Secretary General will make it possible to depoliticise or at least start (I understand that it will not work quickly) the process of depoliticising our organisation and returning it to its roots.

Question: Did you raise the topic of my colleagues who were killed as journalists in Novorossiya during Ukraine’s military operation during the talks today, even before the republics were recognised as part of the Russian Federation?

Sergey Lavrov: The issue of the safety of journalists was raised in sufficient detail. We have taken note of the fact that the OSCE representatives on freedom of the media are following a bad example from UNESCO Director-General Ms Audrey Azoulay. In the annual report that UNESCO publishes on the safety of journalists, she did not bother to mention crimes against our fellow citizens who worked as journalists in hot spots.

We have made a corresponding demarche to UNESCO. We will work to remedy this blatant injustice. Today, we handed over to Secretary-General Feudan Sinirlioglu a list of journalists who have died a heroic death in the line of duty from the beginning of 2022 to the present day.

Chairman of the Russian Union of Journalists Vladimir Solovyov also wrote an open letter to the Secretary-General on this topic. During today's talks, we handed him the original. We will continue to persistently raise this issue.

Question: The OSCE leadership has repeatedly publicly stated the problem of the lack of an agreed budget for the organisation starting from 2022, while the responsibility is placed on Russia, according to the wording of the position of one of the participating states. What do you think is the current situation with the organisation's budget? Is the OSCE really on the verge of financial collapse and if so, who is to blame for this?

Sergey Lavrov: As for the budget, we have long agreed (I don't remember when) with the figures written in the draft document. What we do not agree with is that a purely pragmatic, technical, budget document should be loaded with political assessments, as our Western colleagues are trying to do. Then they accuse Russia of not wanting to politicise the budget document, so it is impossible to adopt it. It is clear what this is all about. Our consent to the figures was given on the basis of a desire to reach a consensus.

We still believe that only consensus can save the OSCE. I don't know what the West believes in (probably no one but Satan), but it is doing everything to destroy the consensus and to make the OSCE cease to exist. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand.

Among the concessions that we have made, signing the budget figures and not questioning them, there are topics that concern the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. It does not have any criteria for its functioning, despite the fact that we have been proposing to agree on such principles for almost twenty years. The West responds to us with a categorical refusal, and the Bureau is the "gold standard" because they want to, let them do it. It is clear that with the help of the previous secretaries-general and current chairmen, a tradition has been established when this Bureau is almost entirely staffed by citizens of NATO or EU countries. They absolutely arbitrarily determine the format and size of election observation missions. Two people are sent somewhere, and three hundred somewhere. First of all, they pay attention to the "countries east of Vienna", and no complaints are made about countries like Romania, for example, where outrageous things are happening on the electoral field.

We will continue to seek transparency in the work of all OSCE institutions. But at this stage, we are not the obstacle to the adoption of the budget.

Question: The new OSCE leadership has set itself the task of supporting Ukraine. Among other things, the mandate of the organisation includes the peaceful settlement of conflicts. Do you see any possible role for the OSCE in resolving the Ukrainian conflict? If so, what kind of role?

Sergey Lavrov: The OSCE was engaged in this from 2014 to 2022.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission was working. Today we talked about the claims that have accumulated against it, including the reluctance to disclose detailed information about who is more to blame for the destruction of civilian infrastructure and targeted artillery attacks against the civilian population. We have been trying to get a corresponding report from the OSCE mission for three years. So that we are not just told how many victims and houses were destroyed, but smashed on both sides of the contact line. When we finally achieved this, it turned out that civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure on the side of Donetsk and Lugansk were five times greater than on the side of the Kiev regime. There was also information that in most cases Luhansk and Donetsk residents responded rather than started firing.

Claims have accumulated about the work of this mission, including the facts of transferring information to the Ukrainian side in gross violation of the principle of neutrality.

No, there are no such plans yet. We need to see. In general, the settlement process has not yet begun. Mr Zelensky publicly declares that he does not want any truce until the Americans give him guarantees that if something happens, they will "bomb" Russia with nuclear weapons. This is how he puts this issue. Therefore, all this is not serious yet. We talked about this today.

There are many proposals to declare a truce and deploy peacekeepers. And then to decide where the boundaries are, how to live further. Peacekeepers are on everyone's lips now. They are already discussing whether 10 thousand will be enough, or maybe 50 or 100. Australia has already volunteered to join, Canada, of course, where without it. But our question is simple (we talked about it today): what will these peacekeepers protect? The remnants of the Kiev Nazi regime, which adopted a series of laws exterminating Russian culture, language, and the media, and banned the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Or will we first seek an end to this racist practice by the Kiev regime? This must first be sorted out. Otherwise, it all looks like an attempt to save the remnants of this regime from popular anger through the deployment of peacekeepers.

Question: In light of reports of massacres and the escalation of the ethnic conflict in Syria, does Russia have the opportunity to help the conflicting parties find a diplomatic solution and avoid further bloodshed? If so, what could this solution look like? If not, why not?

Sergey Lavrov: Regarding the European security architecture. There is a lot of talk on this topic. We have also discussed in detail the trends that are now visible.

Until recently, the Euro-Atlantic concept dominated. It is embodied in the North Atlantic Alliance and the OSCE. Given that the EU, having signed the relevant agreements with NATO, submitted to the bloc, it also fits into the Euro-Atlantic concept as an architecture.

Our continent is larger than the OSCE space. There is not a single continent-wide organisation or structure on it. Africa has the African Union. Latin America has CELAC. And in Eurasia – the largest continent, the richest in natural resources, with enormous potential in terms of logistics and building effective communications (transport, etc.) – there is no such "umbrella" structure where all countries of the continent would meet regularly. Although there are many sub-regional structures, including the EAEU, the CIS, the CSTO, the SCO, ASEAN, the GCC, the Organisation of Turkic States and a number of others. Nowhere in one place do all the countries of the continent gather.

Against this background, I noticed that several years ago, our NATO "colleagues" led by the Biden administration began to talk more and more about the "Indo-Pacific region" (not the Asia-Pacific region) as a region that is now a special priority for the United States. This was confirmed by the Trump administration, stating that Washington's main interests lie there, in eastern Eurasia and the Pacific coast. The Europeans are even offended that the United States pays less attention to them and reorients itself "there."

Long before the current administration, the United States, through NATO, began to promote the concept of the North Atlantic Alliance's responsibility for the entire Eurasian continent. Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was asked why they were so active in the Indo-Pacific region: they created AUKUS (an alliance of the United States, Britain and Australia with a nuclear component), created all sorts of "fours" and "troikas", including the United States-South Korea and Japan, where exercises with a nuclear component are also planned, and promoted a number of other non-inclusive organisations that are limited in size – after all, NATO is an alliance that has declared and declares defence and protection of the territories of its member states as its goal. Jens Stoltenberg said without hesitation that this is the case, they are still doing only what is necessary to protect the territories of member states, but the threat to these territories now stems from the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, etc.

In the absence of a continent-wide security structure in Eurasia, NATO members have already begun to work secretly in favour of subordinating all security processes on this vast continent. It is clear that this is an unacceptable idea. It fundamentally undermines the very principle of the indivisibility of security laid down in the OSCE documents. We very much hope that the Secretary General and his team will uphold the need for all OSCE member states to sacredly respect what their presidents have signed.

Question: Recently, the former Greek ambassador to Ukraine released information that OSCE employees are transmitting to the Armed Forces of Ukraine the targets and coordinates of the positions of our Armed Forces in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are directly firing at these positions. Did you discuss these or similar "measures of cooperation" between the OSCE staff and the Kiev regime at the talks today?

Sergey Lavrov: We discussed this issue. We cited specific facts. This became the subject of public discussion not only after the speech of the former Greek ambassador to Ukraine. These facts were known before. Today we referred to them when we unofficially discussed the possible participation or role of the OSCE in further actions on the Ukrainian conflict.

Of course, Mr Sinirlioglu's predecessors, who headed the Special Monitoring Mission, grossly violated their obligations, exceeded their powers and forced the staff to work in a non-transparent manner. A number of employees assisted one of the warring parties in a gross violation of their mandate.

I forgot to answer one of RT's two questions. We are concerned about what is happening in Syria. Given the efforts that we have been making together with our partners and members of the international community for many years to ensure peace and security for all political and ethnic and religious groups in this friendly country, so that it is free from terrorist threats.

Our contacts so far with representatives of the new authorities in Damascus have shown that they understand these signals, which were conveyed to them not only by us, but by almost all their other partners in the Arab world, the United States, the West, China and India. Such an outbreak of violence is absolutely unacceptable.

We have taken note of our colleagues that during a telephone conversation between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Mr Abdullah al-Sharaa, during the visit to Damascus of an interdepartmental delegation led by Special Presidential Representative and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, and during my meeting in Ankara with Foreign Minister of the new Syrian government Abdullah Shibani, all the necessary assurances were given. The policy of national accord and ensuring the inclusiveness of political processes was confirmed.

The first all-Syrian national congress was held. This is the first experience. It must be continued in order to develop a reliable foundation for the state and draft a constitution. In light of these unacceptable events on the coast, there should be no alternative to an approach that will ensure the involvement of all representatives of various ethnic, religious and political groups without exception in the political process.

Yesterday, even on Sunday evening in New York, our Permanent Representative, together with the US Permanent Representative, made a proposal to the UN Security Council to organize urgent closed consultations so that it would be done without working for the public, in a business-like manner. During these consultations, which took place yesterday, the Secretariat and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Syria briefed the members of the Security Council, and the Council's response is currently being developed. I hope that it will be made public promptly. [My Emphasis]

Is the OSCE a dinosaur or still an organization having a purpose? That’s the question I would’ve asked. IMO, it’s useless as long as NATO/EU exist for that totalitarian group will continue to be anti-Russian even after the West’s war on Ukraine and Russia is over. It’s also my opinion that a pan-Eurasian organization won’t be viable until NATO/EU are history because the dictatorship won’t allow its serfs to join.

The Syrian situation is now as urgent as the Palestinian. Again, EU/NATO appear to be siding with the terrorists. Some of the actions remind me of the Turkish Revolution at WW1’s end where the ethnic massacring went out-of-control. I can envision several solutions, but they aren’t currently possible. Russia’s failed 2019 policy strikes yet again, although to be fair it isn’t all Russia’s fault as that’s shared with the Turks and Assad.

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