US vs Russia As Foreign Ministers Face-Off At Key European Summit

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his outgoing US counterpart Antony Blinken are due to face off over the war in Ukraine on Thursday at an annual meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta.

While Ukraine will be the dominant political issue, the meeting is due to formally approve last-minute agreements reached on issues including senior staff positions at the security and rights body where Western powers often accuse Russia of flouting human rights and other international norms.

The gathering of foreign ministers and other officials from 57 participating states in North America, Europe and Central Asia is overshadowed this year by the return of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose advisers are floating 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 organisation. Lavrov said last year the OSCE was “essentially being turned into an appendage of NATO and the European Union”.

It 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 to a body set up during the Cold War for the east and west to engage with each other. In recent years, however, and especially since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has used what is effectively a veto each country has to block many key decisions, often crippling the organization.

This year, however, the countries blocking agreement on the OSCE budget are Armenia and Azerbaijan rather than Russia, diplomats say, over issues related to their conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Diplomats say a deal was reached this week to fill four senior OSCE positions including that of secretary general, which will be taken up by Turkey’s Feridun Sinirlioglu, who was foreign minister in a caretaker government in 2015.

The most important annual decision at the OSCE – which country will next hold its annually rotating chairmanship – has long been settled, since Finland will hold it for the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act that lay the foundation for the current OSCE.

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