Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on cooperation with regional and sub-regional organisations (UN-OSCE)
Mme.President,
We regret that the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Malta, Mr. I. Borg, instead of implementing his direct mandate that he received from the 57 states-members of the OSCE, spends most of his time (today too) delivering on the political order from the West to demonize Russia in the context of the situation in Ukraine.
From the very beginning of your "watch" in the OSCE, you, Mr. Minister, have defiantly violated its rules. When presenting the priorities of the Maltese Chairmanship on January 25, you identified "keeping Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine at the top of the OSCE agenda" as your key task for this year. You pledged to "continue to demand the complete and immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine". You also made anti-Russian statements during your visit to Ukraine on February 2-3.
Your biased and one-sided accusations against a member state of the OSCE are contrary to the mandate of the OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office as set out in the Ministerial Decision adopted in Porto in 2002. It unequivocally states that "the functions of the Chairmanship-in-Office shall be exercised by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the participating State so designated, ... ensuring that its actions are not inconsistent with positions agreed by all the participating States and that the whole spectrum of opinions of participating States is taken into account". Will you please tell us, when and under what circumstances all 57 States of the OSCE authorized you to replicate anti-Russian narrative?
You have also flagrantly disregarded Permanent Council’s Decision No. 485 of 28 June 2002, which instructs you under all circumstances, when making public statements on behalf of the Organization, to be guided by the rule of consensus, which is fundamental to the OSCE. On whose behalf did you demonstrate today your "unwavering" support for Ukraine?
Let me remind you that this document says that "formal OSCE positions are expressed in decisions, statements and documents adopted by the decision-making bodies on the basis of consensus". There is also a list of persons authorized to make such statements on behalf of the entire OSCE - the Chairman-in-Office, the Secretary General and their authorized official representatives. It is emphasized that "their statements and public outreach activities are to be made in line with their mandates and should not be inconsistent with OSCE consensus positions".
We are entitled to demand that Malta, during its year of Chairmanship at the OSCE, maintain maximum equidistance and act exclusively on behalf of all 57 participating States. We also have every reason to expect from it actions, aimed at overcoming differences and contradictions among the participating States of the Organization.
But instead of that, you are taking the Organization in a direction that bolsters confrontation and makes it increasingly difficult to find common ground. It seems that instead of dialogue and creativity, you bet on destruction and disunity.
Mme.President,
The way the OSCE has acted and is acting with regard to the crisis in Ukraine is a total fiasco. Its Special Monitoring Mission has not only failed as a mediator within the framework of the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, but has also stooped to a lawbreaking step. Instead of monitoring activities, some of SMM staff were reviewing and passing intelligence to Kiev. It is hard to believe that the Mission's leadership was not aware of that.
As for former locally recruited staff of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, all explanations have already been made on several occasions during meetings of the OSCE Permanent Council, including in September 2023. There is nothing to add to them. They were charged in Russia with serious criminal offences related to protecting the lives and ensuring the safety of civilians living in Donbas. This matter is closed.
In this connection, I should like to recall that yesterday marked exactly ten years since the Kiev regime, which came to power as a result of an illegitimate coup d'état, had launched so-called "anti-terrorist operation" against its own citizens in Donbas. From the outset it was clear that this was nothing more than an attempt to expel the Russian-speaking population (who refused to accept the seizure of power by national-radical forces) from their ancestral homes or force into “Ukrainization”. Thereby, people were deprived of the opportunity to speak their native language, to teach it to their children. They started to be persecuted for dissent, and suffered violations of their basic freedoms. Before long, this practice spread from Ukraine’s southern and south-eastern regions throughout the entire country. Endless shelling of cities, deaths of those near and dear - this was the reality in which the civilian population of Donbas existed for eight years, and the shelling continued even after the beginning of the special military operation.
We must note that the Maltese Chairmanship-in-Office is blindly following in the footsteps of its predecessors and is fully subordinate to the Russophobes from the Western camp. Again and again, we hear in OSCE Chair’s speeches utterly false fabrications against Russia. I wonder if Mr. Borg knows about the recent verdict of the UN International Court of Justice, in which it rejected the groundless insinuations of the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors, that were very much in line with the statements of the Maltese Chairmanship, regarding my country's alleged support for "terrorist structures" in Donbas and the unleashing of a "genocidal war" in 2022 as part of our SMO? We advise you to read this decision carefully and see for yourself how out of touch the fabrications of Kiev and its Western sponsors are, which you are promoting on the OSCE platform.
Unfortunately, your condoning of the Kiev regime has quite concrete consequences. It is with ever growing concern that we are watching how virtually every tools and resource at the disposal of OSCE has been assigned to the corrupt tasks of total "Ukrainization" of the Organization’s agenda. One must realize that it impairs other crisis issues on the OSCE area, including Transnistria, security and stability in Southern Caucasus, and the Balkan file.
We are outraged by the active involvement of the Chairmanship-in-Office in the Western campaign to whitewash the criminal actions of the neo-Nazi Maidan authorities. I appeal to the Maltese Chairmanship - do not deceive yourselves. By ignoring the heinous attacks by armed formations of the Zelensky regime against peaceful Russian cities, you show solidarity with them. Thus, being an accomplice, you also share responsibility with the Kiev regime for atrocities against Russian servicemen and civilians, committed i.a. on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Selective blindness on the part of the OSCE is regrettable. For example, you failed to react to the UAF strike on a market in Donetsk earlier this year. Twenty-seven people were killed and dozens were wounded. There were no military targets near the market. This was a targeted, brutal shelling of the civilian population, which cannot be qualified in any other way than as a terrorist attack.
Nor did you pay due attention to the downing by the Ukraine side of Russian IL-76 airplane with six crew members, 65 captured AFU soldiers who were taken to an exchange, as well as three convoys on board. Since the Kiev regime was aware of the route and method of transportation of the PoWs to the pre-agreed exchange location, we can make the natural conclusion that this was a deliberate and well-considered crime. Ukrainian security services have repeatedly admitted, including in interviews with foreign media, to preparing and committing crimes on Russian territory. However, OSCE never expressed direct unequivocal condemnation of such steps never called to put an end to such vicious practices.
May I recall that on the same day that Mr. I. Borg was meeting in Kiev with the head of the neo-Nazi regime, the Ukrainian armed forces shelled a bakery in the town of Lisichansk in the Lugansk People's Republic of Russia. The OSCE leadership found nothing better than to cowardly turn a blind eye to this and many other crimes. It did not have the courage to condemn this deliberate attack against the civilian population in violation of IHL norms.
For the OSCE, which not long ago used to contribute significantly to countering the international terrorist threat in all its manifestations, this is simply shameful.
We have repeatedly called on the Chairmanship-in-Office to take seriously its well-known and repeatedly confirmed by OSCE decisions obligations to formulate a unifying and constructive agenda. We have warned against steps that could undermine the authority of the OSCE as a unique "all-weather" platform for cooperation among the States of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian region. And despite the fact that the fate of the Organization is “hanging on a thread”, we believe that it can still play its role and be in demand after the inevitable defeat of the Kiev regime and its sponsors. The OSCE retains some mediator potential, which is not in use at this point. In order for the OSCE not to fade into history with disgrace, it must give up trying to impose ultimatums, frantic and knowingly unrealistic "formulas" on Ukraine and to work in good faith to restore trust and build a truly mutually respectful dialogue in the interests of finding and implementing formulas for the preservation of global peace and security.
The interaction between the United Nations and the OSCE under Chapter 8 of the Charter of the United Nations should also be directed towards these noble goals. These efforts can be viable only if inclusive and taking into account Russian interests, and not if they assume a Russophobic spirit and encourage a "zero-sum game". The sooner you and your colleagues realize this immutable truth, the better the OSCE's chances of survival. The choice is yours.
Thank you.
