Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s first mission to Europe since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine has turned into a confrontation with his Western counterparts. Lavrov, whose last trip to the EU was a visit to Stockholm in December 2021, flew to Malta to attend the ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). A spokesperson for the Valletta government recalled that Lavrov was subjected to an asset freeze by the EU, but that he was not banned from travel, underlining that the Russian Foreign Minister was invited to “maintain some channels of open communication”.
The clash
But the communication was certainly not peaceful, and immediately turned into an exchange of accusations between him and his Ukrainian and American counterparts, Andriï Sybiga and Antony Blinken, both present at the meeting. “Ukraine continues to fight for its right to exist. And the Russian war criminal present at this table should know that Ukraine will win this right and justice will prevail,” Sybiga thundered at the meeting. The head of Ukrainian diplomacy argued that Moscow “lies” when it talks about peace and represents “the biggest threat” to security in Europe.
Lavrov, for his part, accused the West of being responsible for the ”reincarnation of the cold war”, adding that ”now the risk of a transition to a hot war is much higher”. Speaking to journalists about a possible deployment of European troops in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man said that “these fantasies only exacerbate the situation, the leaders who continue to spread these proposals are choosing not to listen to the clear warnings that President Putin has already made on several occasions on the subject”.
“It’s not us who have to make peace proposals, we never wanted to attack anyone, it’s the United States who attacked us using Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces and who attack our territory with long-range missiles, we were left without a choice” , Lavrov added.
Get out of the room
When the minister spoke at the OSCE meeting, the heads of Polish and Latvian diplomacy left, followed by half a dozen of their colleagues. “Mr. Lavrov comes here to lie about the Russian invasion and what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And I am not going to listen to these lies. I will not sit at the same table as him,” attacked Polish minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who called for Russia’s suspension from the OSCE as long as it continues its ‘brutal war’ against Ukraine.
“I’m sorry that our colleague Lavrov left the room, not giving me the courtesy of listening to us as we listened to him. And of course our Russian colleague is very good at drowning listeners in a tsunami of misinformation,” he said instead. US Secretary of State Blinken. “Let’s not allow him, or anyone else, to mislead us. It is not and has never been about Russia’s security”, added the American, according to whom it is only about “Putin’s imperial plan to erase Ukraine from map”.
The OSCE, founded in 1975 to ease tensions between East and West during the Cold War, has 57 members. During the last meeting a year ago in North Macedonia, Lavrov accused the organization of having become an “appendage” of NATO and the EU.
