Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko’s remarks at the OSCE Annual Security Review Conference, June 26-27, 2024

Madam Chairperson,

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.

Active hostilities, starting with Kiev’s punitive operation against Donbass, are just one theatre 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. The price is the people of Ukraine, some of whom are dying for someone else’s goals, while others are trying their best to flee Ukraine. Those still staying in the country seem not to believe as much in fairy tales about a bright European future as before.

The political circus in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, clearly showed those who were reluctant to see things for what they are that all the Kiev regime’s Western curators want to accomplish is squeeze Ukraine dry for its resources, rather than achieve peace. Peace was an easy goal to attain through the Minsk agreements, which provided for the Lugansk and Donetsk regions reunification with Ukraine and respecting fundamental human rights in the process. There were a number of other options, including talks in Minsk and Istanbul which were torpedoed by the West. The barbaric attack using an ATACMS missile with a cluster warhead on the civilians and children in Sevastopol during the Holy Trinity holiday is the direct outcome of the “peaceful” Bürgenstock summit.

There is no such thing as security or cooperation in Europe. The United States has annihilated the political and military centrality of the OSCE. Arms control agreements that were of key importance to European and Euro-Atlantic security have been broken. The NATO members are having businesslike discussions about supplying the Kiev regime with ever more high-precision and long-range weapons and lifting restrictions on using them. They themselves will control these weapons and choose targets. The sweeping contempt for the principles of responsible export controls of the OSCE Document on SALW and the OSCE Principles Governing Conventional Arms Transfers is evident.

In order to achieve the perfect level of security, NATO countries that have declared themselves frontline countries would not hesitate to wrap barbed wire around their borders, dig anti-tank ditches and jostle for the honourable right to host as many foreign, preferably American, troops as possible, while taking money out of their economies and sinking it into US-made weapons. And do all of that under the banner that if Russia is allowed to win, it will go to conquer Poland and the Baltic States.

The economic dimension of the OSCE is collapsing under the weight of innumerable illegal sanctions imposed not only on Russia, but also on other countries which prefer to choose their partners on their own and to build mutually beneficial relations without anyone telling them what to do.

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 Ukrainianisation 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.

One would think Europe should not forget the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime if only to preserve itself. However, Europeans were bashfully silent when, in front of the whole world, nationalist thugs sporting swastika tattoos were burning people in the Trade Union House in Odessa, and shot and killed in cold blood those who tried to escape. Now, the country with flourishing Nazi ideology and practices is being dragged into the “values-based” European Union.

All that remains of the OSCE is a shell, a framework for a political dialogue, but there is no dialogue in sight. Bucharest refused to issue entry visas to members of the parliamentary delegations of Russia and Belarus who planned to participate in the annual session of the OSCE PA, thus showing contempt for the OSCE rules and procedures, and the OSCE itself.

We have heard speakers here discuss the OSCE principles and observe these principles. Each time you ponder territorial integrity and non-use of force, think about 1999 and NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia and the attempt to tear Kosovo and Metohija away. Speaking of non-interference in internal affairs, think about the Western emissaries on the Kiev Maidan. Think about thousands upon thousands of people who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to escape the aftermath of the “humanitarian interventions” carried out by the West in order to shore up the infamous rules-based order. Speaking of sovereign equality, think about the Europeans keeping their mouths shut when the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up. Think back to August 2008 when white was called black and vice versa when, intoxicated by the promise of NATO, Mikheil Saakashvili attacked Tskhinval while the city was asleep.

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.