Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accuses OSCE of being 'anti-Russia' | DW News

Russia's

foreign

minister

criticized the organization for security and cooperation in Europe by opening its annual meeting in Poland without him. Sergey Lavrov accused the OSCE of

being

anti-Russian after host country Poland banned him from attending a meeting in Woodshire that opened with denunciations of Russia's war. against Ukraine, which has been one of the group's biggest challenges since it was created almost 50 years ago as a forum to discuss security issues within Europe, how is correspondent Terry Shorts in those talks in Poland, told me how it is going discussing Russia in Mr. Lavrov's absence. That's right, Russia is represented by its ambassador to the OSCE and certainly the issue of Russia's war against Ukraine absolutely dominated this meeting of 57 countries here in Poland.

Country after country denounced Moscow's actions, its aggression against Ukraine and promised more support for kyiv, but Foreign Minister Lavrov may have been out of sight, but he was not out of mind, as he gave a long e incoherent press conference at exactly the same time as the meeting began, he trashed the organization, criticized the Polish presidency of it and said that the OSCE is basically under the control of the United States, but once again the majority of the countries here, the vast majority are firmly against Russia, there is even a discussion about whether Russia should be expelled from the organization even though there is no mechanism to do so, so certainly here sentiment was firmly against Moscow, regardless. that Lavrov has been saying there and EU

foreign

policy chief Joseph Burrell has been saying that the plan is to make Russia pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

How do you plan to do that? That's right, foreign policy chief. Burrell raised those issues here at the OSCE and said that he would discuss them with his partners here and that there are some creative ways in which the EU is considering making Russia pay for what is done in Ukraine, as he reiterates all the time, e.g. . There are about 20 billion euros in assets that have been frozen, assets of oligarchs have been blacklisted by Russia, there are also about 300 billion euros in assets that the Russian bank has and cannot use at the moment. So one of the ways the EU is thinking is that it could get money from Russia to kyiv right now without any other legal mechanism to do so, by investing the Russian money and using the interest to give it to kyiv.

There are other ways you plan to work. do that in the long term and one of them of course is paying war reparations after the war is over, but right now they are looking for practical ways to get money to Kiev from Moscow quickly and what else is on the agenda there in Which is presumably not just about Russia and Ukraine, it's not just about Russia and Ukraine, but as I mentioned, that is absolutely dominating the meeting, you know, speaker after speaker, the foreign

minister

s have to basically address the issues whether the OSCE is a viable country. and an effective organization because it operates by consensus, which means that in this case Russia or one of its allies, Belarus or any other country on another issue can prevent the organization from moving forward, for example at the time when Moscow is blocking the budget 2024 and block the next presidency, which would be Estonia, so there is a lot of talk about how the organization can be effective if it is based on consensus, but in general the feeling is that, despite the difficulties we are going through now, still has value Having 57 countries, including Russia, sitting around the table, for now there is a lot of support for the OSCE in general, okay, thanks Terry Terry Schultz at the CSO meeting in Poland.