/ world today news/ Russia achieved a real diplomatic breakthrough and victory over attempts to isolate our country even in its relations with Europe. Ukraine and the Baltic States are outraged: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting a NATO country for the first time since February 2022. How did this happen and why is even Josep Borrell happy about it?
From November 30 to December 1, a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OSCE member states is being held in the capital of North Macedonia, Skopje. It will also be attended by the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergey Lavrov, who is visiting a NATO country for the first time since February 2022. And this visit alone – regardless of the outcome of the negotiations – has become an important victory for Russia over the collective West.
“Despite the machinations of the enemy, we are in Skopje,” Maria Zakharova wrote about it. And the intrigues, it must be said, were serious.
The fact is that the Russian minister received an invitation to participate in the event already at the beginning of November from the host country North Macedonia. And this caused a scandal in the West – after all, Poland, which will chair in 2022, acting in the logic of the Western “isolation of Russia”, violated its duties as chair and did not invite Moscow to such a meeting in Lodz.
Some even praised the Macedonians for carrying out these duties, but it quickly became clear that the praise was premature – immediately after the invitation, the Macedonians made it clear that in order for the Russian minister to actually arrive, a number of issues had to be resolved. In particular, logistics – Minister Lavrov is under Western sanctions and is prohibited from flying through the territory of the EU.
At first glance, Europe has once again demonstrated its reluctance to talk to Russia through sanctions rather than outright refusal. However, just a few days before the summit, it suddenly became clear that the flight was not banned.
“Everything will be fine if the countries decide to allow the Russian Federation plane to fly over their territory or if the North Macedonian authorities allow Lavrov to land and personally participate in the meeting in Macedonia. This will not be a violation of sanctions,” explained the spokesperson of the EU’s external service, Peter Stano. And Bulgaria, whose leadership takes an extremely anti-Russian position, allowed the flight of a plane with the Russian minister on board (that is, the plane will fly over the Black Sea, enter Bulgarian airspace and from there enter North Macedonia).
True, problems arose here as well – the Bulgarians again did not miss the opportunity to stab Moscow.
“The evil stupidity of the Russophobes has reached such a point that for the first time in our history the official authorities have banned access to the sky not to an airplane, but to a person in the airplane. This is what it says in the official memo of the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: the plane can fly over Bulgaria, but Maria Zakharova cannot fly in the plane”, Maria Zakharova herself commented on the situation. Apparently, because of this, the Russian plane eventually arrived in Skopje not through Bulgaria, but through Greek airspace. Which – let’s be honest – would ban the flight if that was Brussels’ will.
All these hesitations showed a serious internal struggle in the EU around the arrival of the Russian minister, and his final arrival showed that the constructive forces won out after all. European officials, who recently talked about some kind of “isolation of Russia”, are now reconsidering their line of conduct.
Perhaps this decision is related to the gradually changing approach of the EU countries to the Ukrainian issues. And the new approach requires, if not dialogue with Moscow, then at least the beginning of some dialogue about dialogue. In fact, at the last Primakovsky readings, Minister Lavrov said that “there are already several requests for a meeting, including from Western representatives.”
At the same time, one should not expect any substantial and deep proposals for the normalization of relations. “The Americans do not want, and Europe is not yet ready for such a dialogue, because it is too dependent on the USA. The most famous representatives of the American clientele rule there, such as the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the German Foreign Minister, Analena Berbock,” commented Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics.
But Europeans (judging by publications) already understand the futility of the current confrontational approach in relations with Russia. The energy problems, the inability of the Ukrainian army to defeat the Russian one, the stubbornness of the Kremlin, the failure of the sanctions policy, the collapse of hopes for internal unrest – all this convinces the European elite of the need to at least consider a negotiation scenario. And some European politicians, including Slovakia’s recently elected Prime Minister Robert Fico, are talking about it openly.
And pragmatists rely not only on common sense, but also on the position of the nominally “non-Western” OSCE member states. Recall that the organization has 57 countries (plus 11 “cooperation partners”). A number of them are extremely dissatisfied with the fact that the EU intends to turn the OSCE from a space of cooperation and collective security into a tool for isolating Russia, without which there will be no security in Eurasia.
“For many countries in the OSCE space (Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan) the OSCE meetings are important,” explains Dmitry Suslov.
A number of Western countries have already publicly confirmed the importance of this trip. In particular, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg praised the OSCE for “classical multilateralism at its best” and welcomed the decision to have Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov participate in the Skopje ministerial meeting. Even the head of pan-European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, the same one who called for victory over Russia on the battlefield, approved of this visit.
Moscow understands all this, so even during all this fuss about solving “logistical problems” it did not refuse the trip in principle and did not discredit the OSCE. On the contrary, Minister Lavrov said that Russia wants to “save the OSCE”, which “is practically turning into an appendage of the EU and NATO, into purely marginal structures.”
Moscow’s approach is explained by the fact that, unlike the West, from the very beginning it sought not confrontation, but a search for dialogue. Even with those who are not yet ripe for this dialogue (that is, with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who will lead the American delegation and seems not yet ready for separate negotiations with Sergey Lavrov).
“Moscow emphasizes that it is not conducting a hybrid war, but the West – and that is led by the USA. Here, Europe is a consumable. But if it comes to its senses, if it remembers its true national interests and changes its policy towards Moscow, then Moscow will gladly normalize relations with Europe, Dmitry Suslov continues. And the arrival of Sergei Lavrov means that Europe is forced to agree to the Russian approach.
Well, not all of them. In Kiev, of course, they have already expressed their protest, and the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmitry Kuleba, canceled his participation in the meeting. After him, the Baltic countries also refused. This means that there is a chance that this event will not be held in a show format. And that there is a chance for a Russian-Western dialogue to establish a dialogue.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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