The West is applying the organization’s principles selectively, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official has said
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is alarmingly indifferent to the resurgence of Nazism on the continent, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, Grigory Lukyantsev, has said.
He made the statement alongside Russian and Belarusian delegations at a forum at the organization’s headquarters in Vienna on Monday.
“The absolute indifference of the OSCE to the fact that Nazi ideas are being revived in Europe cannot but cause extreme concern,” Lukyantsev, who heads up the ministry’s Department for Multilateral Cooperation on Human Rights, said.
“Historical truth and common sense as such are being sacrificed. Torch marches, aggressive nationalism, glorification of Nazis and their accomplices. The large-scale spread of Russophobia is a continuation of this criminal, unnatural tendency,” he said.
The victory over Nazism in World War II “laid the foundations” for both the 1945 UN Charter, and the subsequent Helsinki Accords, which underpinned “security and cooperation in Europe,” Lukyantsev noted.
The major Cold War agreement, which was aimed at reducing tensions between the Soviet and Western blocs, was signed in 1975 at the culmination of the first Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (now called OSCE).
Yet, the West has attempted to “usurp” the humanitarian rights agenda and “subordinate” structures such as the OSCE for their own purposes, Lukyantsev said. “The principles of relations between states enshrined in the Helsinki Act are applied selectively, filled with new meanings, and even completely distorted.”
Russia has repeatedly attempted to push for a reform of the organization and “give it a legal foundation and a Charter,” but every attempt has been stonewalled by the West, he added.
Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the OSCE, like every other Euro-Atlantic structure, has “failed to strengthen security and stability.” Instead, these structures stoked international tensions, leaving the Euro-Atlantic community “preparing for a new war,” the top diplomat said.
In the lead-up to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Russia repeatedly accused OSCE observers of ignoring Kiev’s attacks on civilians in Donbass.
The West ignored Ukraine’s repression of its Russian-speaking population since the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, according to Moscow. Meanwhile, Ukrainian nationalists in neo-Nazi groups such as Svoboda, Right Sector, and Azov have committed numerous violent offenses, according to Russia.
President Vladimir Putin has cited the protection of the Russian-speaking population of Donbass as being among the key reasons Russia launched its military operation in 2022.
