Post #28239

#Announcement 🗓 On February 6, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to hold talks in Moscow with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis and OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu (Türkiye). Sergey Lavrov’s previous meeting with Ignazio Cassis and Feridun Sinirlioglu took place in New York in September 2025 on the sidelines of the high-level week as part of the High-Level Week of the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly. Elected by the organisation’s members for one calendar year, the OSCE’s chairship-in-office is tasked with: • coordinating the activities and holding consultations on current matters, • appointing the heads of field missions and special representatives on conflicts and various issues, • holding meetings of the OSCE’s decision-making bodies and other events. The country assuming the OSCE chairmanship must focus on consensus-based approaches and take into account the diversity of opinions as expressed by member states as well as strictly adhere to the mandate of the chairship as set out in the decision of the 2002 OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Porto titled “The role of the OSCE chairmanship-in-office” and the Permanent Council Decision No. 845 dated 2002 titled “OSCE statements and public information.” Considering the current situation within the OSCE, it can hardly play any role in ensuring security within the new multipolar world order. There is no doubt that the OSCE could benefit from taking into account the experience of associations such as the #SCO, #BRICS and the #CIS, where countries have been guided by the principles of equality and mutual support. The talks will focus on overcoming the deep crisis the OSCE is currently experiencing. It results from the destructive actions by some Western countries, who have been seeking to exploit the OSCE in the pursuit of their vested interests, including by unleashing an anti-Russian hysteria. Finland was proactive in encouraging this posture during its chairmanship-in-office in 2025. It failed to fulfil its mandate as an honest broker. In particular, nothing was done to bring the three security dimensions – politico-military, economic and environmental, and humanitarian – back to normal. There has been virtually no progress along these tracks since 2022 which is attributable to an almost total Ukrainisation of the OSCE agenda. 🇷🇺Russia intends to discuss the prospects for addressing the existing problems while respecting the interests of all the participating countries. <...> During the meeting, participants will pay special attention to the OSCE’s economic and environmental dimension, which is designed to harmonise the interests of the participating states in the corresponding sectors. Russia will stress that it is unacceptable to use tools pertaining to the second basket when assessing environmental damage in Ukraine and promoting manifestly confrontational positions such as subjecting climate-related matters to the security agenda. <...> The Foreign Minister will focus on the most recent issues within the OSCE space, i.e., countering the manifestations of neo-Nazism, preventing the falsification of history and media censorship, defending traditional values, the rights of believers and ethnic minorities. Sergey Lavrov also intends to point out there has been a tendency for over three years now to replace OSCE’s key events, including the Humanitarian Segment of the OSCE Review Conference, with formats operating outside of the consensus rule. <...> Russia will draw the Chairperson-in-Office’s attention to the need to address Russia’s obvious underrepresentation in senior political roles within the OSCE, as well as the need to ensure that Russian candidates are treated in an impartial manner.