Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko read the riot act to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe at its Annual Security Review Conference, held in Vienna on June 26-27. Foreign Minister of Malta Ian Borg, the OSCE Chair-In-Office, had already set the tone for the conference in the press release announcing its convening. “Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine challenges the integrity of the rules-based order, testing our collective resolve to uphold the laws, rules, and norms that have underpinned international peace and security since the end of the Second World War,” Borg was quoted saying in the release.
“The claims that were made here regarding the Ukraine conflict should not mislead anyone and obscure the main point that Washington had unleashed a hybrid war to preserve its global hegemony in a world that has undergone dramatic change and is increasingly vocal about the need for more change,” Grushko said at the outset of his remarks, according to the transcript published by the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 27. “Active hostilities, starting with Kiev’s punitive operation against Donbass, are just one theater of this hybrid war. The goal is to prevent Russia and its allies from establishing themselves as a centerpiece of the emerging new and fairer international order.”
“There is no such thing as security or cooperation in Europe. The United States has annihilated the political and military centrality of the OSCE,” Grushko said, citing among other things the breaking of arms control agreements by the US and the supply of weapons to the Kiev regime.
“The unifying theme of transnational threats and challenges, including all other threats and challenges, is out of breath amid the suffocating atmosphere of the total Ukrainianization of the OSCE agenda.
“The humanitarian basket and the activities of the OSCE institutions have been eviscerated by Western double standards. Make your European choice publicly known, and you’ll get a free pass to all sorts of human rights violations all the way to unleashing war against your own people, which is what the Kiev regime did after the Maidan coup.”
Grushko concluded: “Is there an alternative to sliding toward a point of no return? Yes, there is. It is contained in President Putin’s proposals on ending the Ukraine conflict, which he articulated at a meeting with the Foreign Ministry senior officials on June 14.”
