Post #28276

🎙Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement following talks with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis, and OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu(Moscow, February 6, 2026) Key points: • As you are aware, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired yesterday. A vacuum has emerged. Our position was articulated comprehensively in a special statement issued by our Ministry. We will proceed from the understanding that Russia is prepared for any eventuality. We favour dialogue and will await indications that the United States is similarly ready to engage. • The reasons [of a major crisis in the OSCE] clearly lie in what NATO and EU countries are doing. Long ago, well before the events in Ukraine, they set about bringing the Organisation to heel. After the special military operation began, their goal expanded to include putting the Organisation at the service of the hybrid war against the Russian Federation and supporting the hot war against our country unleashed by the hands of the Ukrainian regime. • Almost the entire OSCE agenda, with very rare exceptions, has been Ukrainised, including the areas that should have been devoted to mutually advantageous cooperation and the quest for specific generally acceptable projects in transport, communications, logistics, investment, and humanitarian matters. • We discussed, in a broader context, things we could do to ensure that the OSCE retains its importance and stays alive. We updated our colleagues in detail on President Putin’s initiative to form a Greater Eurasian Partnership, which would serve as a material foundation of Eurasian architecture of equal and indivisible security open to all countries and associations of our common Eurasian continent. • Across all three OSCE “baskets” – the military and political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions – there is either complete stagnation or Ukrainisation. • Our colleagues, particularly OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioğlu, have actively supported our position that it is unacceptable for an entity described as an organisation to lack a formal charter. The institutions that have developed within its framework operate without universally agreed rules, despite the OSCE’s proclaimed adherence to the principle of consensus. • Nearly twenty years ago, in 2007, the Russian Federation, together with its CIS and CSTO partners, circulated specific proposals, including a draft charter and draft documents setting out the principles and procedures governing the work of all OSCE institutions. Back then, the West did everything possible to obstruct this effort. • The advice we gave to our counterparts was not to pursue sweeping global ambitions such as transforming the OSCE into the central institution for nearly all developments in this part of Eurasia, but instead to begin by restoring the normal functioning of the military-political mechanisms that have become inactive, through no fault of our own, as well as those in the economic and humanitarian dimensions. We concluded our discussions here with an agreement to maintain contact. 📄Read in full