Refusing to negotiate with Russia is 'dangerous'

"The West should not feel shy about sitting at the negotiating table with Russia," Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said after the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) chair, North Macedonia, allowed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to attend the organization's annual foreign ministers' meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia, this week.

At the same time, Mr. Schallenberg also welcomed the above decision and added that the foreign policy implemented in the OSCE is based on the perspective of “classical multilateralism”.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg. (Photo: AP)

However, representatives of the Baltic countries have criticized North Macedonia's decision. Specifically, on November 28, representatives of the Baltic countries said that they would not participate in the upcoming OSCE Ministerial meeting due to Russia's participation.

In a joint statement, the Foreign Ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stressed that the decision to invite Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the conference in North Macedonia risks legitimizing the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The move comes as Ukraine's Western allies seek to rally more support for Kiev as fighting continues.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also announced that he would attend this meeting of OSCE foreign ministers.

Last year, when Poland assumed the OSCE’s rotating presidency for one year, it refused to invite Lavrov to attend. At the time, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg was the only Western official to criticize the decision.

The OSCE foreign ministers' summit will take place from November 30 to December 1. Foreign Minister Lavrov flew to the North Macedonian capital on the evening of November 29. The Russian Foreign Minister's plane had to travel through Turkish and Greek airspace to get to North Macedonia.

According to the original plan, Mr. Lavrov was to fly over Bulgaria, but the country refused to open its airspace to Mr. Lavrov's plane.

Kong Anh (Source: russian.rt.com)

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