Ukraine News: Lavrov wants to use “every means” to prevent defeat

At the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta, there is a dispute over the participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. For the first time since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began almost three years ago, Lavrov arrived in an EU country. He landed in the capital Valletta late on Wednesday evening. Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski accused the top Russian diplomat of coming to the meeting in Malta “to lie about the Russian invasion and what Russia is doing in Ukraine.” Sikorski called on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. “I will not sit at the same table with Mr. Lavrov,” Sikorski told reporters upon his arrival. Only after Russia withdraws from Ukraine will the OSCE “make sense again.”

The OSCE is considered one of the few dialogue forums for security and democratic policy in which Western representatives sit at the same table with Russia. Unlike several other European institutions, Russia has not withdrawn from the OSCE. Moscow sees the organization as a platform to spread its own positions on the war there. Lavrov was last in an EU country at the end of 2021, also at a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers. When the OSCE met in Lodz, Poland, in December 2022, Warsaw refused Lavrov entry, although the EU sanctions imposed on him in February 2022 do not mean an entry ban.

Shortly before the start of the meeting, the host country Malta canceled the entry visa of Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Foreign Ministry in Valletta justified this with an entry ban imposed on them. An exception was initially made for the two-day conference in the small EU country starting Thursday and a visa was issued to Sakharova. However, EU legal regulations also stipulate that member states may object to the issuance of visas. According to the Maltese Foreign Ministry, three countries did this at short notice. The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have objected to such an exception to the issuance of visas, diplomatic sources said. Zakharova protested against the cancellation of the visa.