Ukraine opposes Russian participation in OSCE meeting

Ukraine opposes the presence of the Russian delegation at the official meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and offered to postpone the meeting.

Source: Ruslan Stefanchuk, Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, during a conversation with the President of the OSCE PA Margareta Cederfelt, as reported by European Pravda.

Details: "Stefanchuk emphasised that the Ukrainian side is concerned about the crisis situation in which the OSCE PA turned out to be, due to the non-approval of changes to the rules of procedure of the Assembly by the Standing Committee of the OSCE PA at the previous meeting in Warsaw," according to the statement on the council's website.

Stefanchuk also noted that the possible presence at the winter meeting of the OSCE PA on 23-24 February in Vienna directly on the anniversary of the beginning of the large-scale aggressive war against Ukraine caused misunderstandings. Also, the delegations of the Russian Federation and Belarus were not denied visas to attend the official OSCE event.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that the delegations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the aggressor state, will find themselves at the same table at the official meeting of the OSCE PA. It seems to me that this does not correspond either to the principles on which the OSCE is founded, or to common sense in general," Stefanchuk emphasised.

He also drew attention to the fact that he repeatedly reached out to fellow parliamentarians of the OSCE PA with a call to ensure full-scale international isolation of the Kremlin regime, which unleashed a war in the centre of Europe.

"I ask you to consider the possibility of applying a certain operational way out of the current situation, and I propose to consider the issue of an extraordinary meeting of the Bureau of the Assembly with the aim of making a decision on the postponement of the winter meeting of the OSCE PA. And I have preliminary signals from partners about the readiness to support such a proposal," said Stefanchuk.

Background:

• Earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland stated that Austria's granting of visas to the Russian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly is a bad decision that doesn’t correspond with the adopted sanctions.
• Alexander Schallenberg, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria, defends the country's decision to allow Russian delegates under Western sanctions to the OSCE meeting in Vienna, despite criticism from two dozen countries.

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