Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will boycott the OSCE ministerial meeting due to the decision to allow S. Lavrov to participate, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry representative Oleh Nikolenka told the AFP news agency.
Lavrov said he plans to attend the OSCE meeting.
After it was announced that he would participate, the ministers of the Baltic countries also announced that they would boycott the meeting.
The day before, Bulgaria announced that it would open its airspace to the Russian minister, making a diplomatic exception for Russia. European airspace is closed to this country because of its invasion of Ukraine.
Lavrov is under European Union sanctions and has asked North Macedonia and neighboring Bulgaria to open their airspace so he can fly to the meeting in Skopje.
Russia’s top diplomat said Monday he plans to go there if he is allowed to do so.
“If we succeed, we will be there,” he said, according to Russian news agencies.
The annual meeting of ministers begins in the capital of North Macedonia on Thursday.
Kyiv has called for the exclusion of Moscow from this organization.
“We must work together to save the OSCE from Russia,” Nikolenka said in a statement posted on social media.
According to him, Russia should be expelled from the OSCE because it has committed the biggest armed aggression in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
North Macedonia currently holds the rotating presidency of this European security institution.
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2024-08-29 23:36:14
