VIENNA (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his outgoing American counterpart Antony Blinken are due to face off over the war in Ukraine on Thursday at the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta.
While Ukraine will be the dominant political issue, the meeting is expected to formally approve last-minute deals on issues including senior staff positions at the security and rights body where Western powers often accuse Russia of violating human rights and other international norms.
The gathering of foreign ministers and other officials from the 57 participating nations in North America, Europe and Central Asia has been overshadowed this year by the return of US President-elect Donald Trump, whose advisers are putting forward proposals to end the war that would cede large parts of Ukraine to Russia.
With Trump due to take office in just over a month, Western powers plan to reiterate their support for Ukraine, while Russia is likely to renew its criticism of the organization. Lavrov said last year that the OSCE “has essentially been turned into a pendant of NATO and the European Union.”
This is Lavrov’s first trip to the European Union since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The OSCE is the successor body established during the Cold War for East and West to cooperate with each other. However, in recent years, and especially since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has used what is effectively a veto each country has to block many key decisions, often paralyzing the organization.
However, this year the countries blocking the OSCE budget deal are Armenia and Azerbaijan, not Russia, diplomats say, because of issues related to their conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Diplomats say an agreement was reached this week to fill four senior positions in the OSCE, including that of secretary general, which will be taken over by Turk Feridun Sinirlioglu, who served as foreign minister in the interim government in 2015.
The most important annual decision in the OSCE – which country will be next in the annual rotating chairmanship – has long been made, as Finland will chair it for the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Document that laid the foundation for the current OSCE.
