Skopje : Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions following the 30th OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting.
I regret that we have approached the 30th OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in an atmosphere that is not conducive to anniversary celebrations. We are seeing the complete degradation of everything that has been created within the OSCE (previously within this Conference) in all three security dimensions.We have become convinced that our Western colleagues have not learned any lessons from their disastrous policy line towards destroying the OSCE. They continue to finish it off with a zeal worthy of better use. Everything has been destroyed in the military-political area. They refused to ratify the Adapted CFE Treaty and many other agreements that helped maintain a security balance. Everything has been destroyed in the economic area as well. This second “basket” was demolished by the unprecedented sanctions that the EU and the US have imposed on the Russia Federation. There is nothing to say about human rights. No problems at all arose for many years despite the killing of children, women and civilians in general, and the full trade and economic blockade of Donbass and the suspension of water supplies to Russian Crimea.The Macedonian Chairmanship set the right motto – “It’s about people.” During yesterday’s working lunch, I told my colleagues that when talking about people we were referring to all citizens of the OSCE countries and even “non-citizens” that are kept in this shameful status in Latvia and Estonia. In reality, it appears that all this excitement and concern about people is limited to the four heads of the OSCE offices. At any rate, I cannot reach any other conclusion from the nervous activity of our Western colleagues. I do not care about the outcome of this get-together and the attempts to bargain for an extra day or week to continue the crude violation of all OSCE principles.