The OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly session began Thursday morning in Warsaw, with some 200 delegates from 52 countries attending. Missing from the session of the world’s biggest security bloc is the Russian delegation, to which Poland has refused to issue visas, among them Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
“Following Russia's illegal aggression against Ukraine on February 24th a number of Russian nationals were added to the list of sanctioned individuals, including Minister Lavrov”, the Polish OSCE chairmanship said in a statement earlier this month.
In a speech at the opening of the OSCE session, Polish foreign minister and current OSCE head Zbigniew Rau said that “one thing seems absolutely certain: in the history of the OSCE, we have no experience of a crisis as fundamental as the current war in Ukraine, which was started by the Russian Federation”.
“This war is an existential threat to Ukraine, while the OSCE is asking itself questions about its own role in the 21st century. The international community has completely united in defense of the basic principles of international law; the vast majority of OSCE countries have adopted the principles of international law as their own”, Rau added.
The Polish chief diplomat added that now is the time to halt Russia's imperial instinct, which, in his opinion, is an idea that “does not belong to today's reality”, with the result being political instability and a decline in economic growth.
“Russia is actually harming itself by fostering these imperial instincts”, Rau said at the session.
(jh)
Source: PAP
