The long-established Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is threatened with disintegration due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and critics claim that Moscow is illegally infiltrating the organization and sabotaging its work to ensure European peace and stability, writes the German weekly "Spiegel" in its latest issue. .
One threat was barely veiled: a Moscow diplomat warned that "anyone" could be "reached anywhere," including diplomats from other countries.
His harsh words were addressed to a colleague from Lithuania. At that meeting in March 2022 of the OSCE, an organization whose goal is peace, the Lithuanian dared to criticize the Russian war, incurring the wrath of his Russian counterpart. In the end, the Russian threatened to put his fellow diplomat on trial in Russia, where criticizing the war can lead to up to 15 years in prison.
That verbal outburst is one of many conflicts that are rocking the organization. Nothing has been the same for the OSCE since founding member Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The war seems to have completely engulfed the peacekeeping organization. Ukraine's ambassador to the OSCE, Yevgeny Chymbalyuk, calls it "an existential crisis caused by Russia."
The whole organization is in danger of collapse because the work of the OSCE is based on consensus, but Russia increasingly refuses to participate. Among some members, there is a growing fear of the possible infiltration of Russian agents as diplomats. Western intelligence agencies report that Russia often uses international organizations as cover for its secret service operatives. They officially belong to Russian delegations, but they are spies.
The OSCE has 57 member states, including the entire European Union and all the successor states of the Soviet Union, along with the United States and Canada. Its mission is "conflict prevention" and "crisis management". But what does it mean when one member state invades another? - asks "Spiegel".
The seat of the OSCE is in Vienna. The administration is led by the General Secretariat, and there is also a Parliamentary Assembly with its own staff. But most of the organization's more than 3.500 employees work in Southeast Europe, Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. They train civil servants, observe elections and support peace negotiations.
Since Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, more than 1.000 OSCE observers have been in Ukraine at times. Their tasks included monitoring the observance of the truce and organizing the exchange of prisoners. But that mission ended abruptly in 2022, and its mandate then expired because Russia opposed its continuation, and extending that mission was taken off the table.
Russian diplomats have since blocked several OSCE decisions, including a vote on who will lead the organization from 2024. The OSCE is chaired by a different member state each year. It was Poland in 2022, and this year it is North Macedonia. Estonia applied for the chairmanship in 2024, but Russia refused to approve it, and the German Foreign Ministry assessed that Russia was betraying the principle of OSCE consensus.
Moscow has also largely suspended payments to the organization. According to "Spiegel" sources, he owes more than 10 million euros. The Russian OSCE delegation did not respond to a question about this.
For now, Russian employees have remained at the OSCE, but some member countries have long since identified personnel they consider suspicious. For example, the wife of Russia's deputy foreign minister - the man who shares responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine - was still working for the OSCE several months after the invasion of Moscow. The translator who made headlines for allegedly trying to get close to Donald Trump privately and still works at the OSCE, as well as the man who several security experts have long identified as an agent, according to Spiegel's sources.
"The OSCE must learn to live without Russia or it (the OSCE) will die together with Russia," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. His government called for the temporary exclusion of Russia from that organization. Such a move would not be a precedent because that organization temporarily excluded the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for several years in 1992. Still, some point out that the OSCE could be a good forum for rapprochement once the shooting in Ukraine ends.
Critics claim that Russia has made the work of OSCE staff in Ukraine difficult from the very beginning. In early 2014, observers were still documenting the direction from which the heavy missiles came, but were later only allowed to keep records of where rockets and shells fell. The question of who sent them thus became a matter of interpretation, and thus "food" for propagandists.
Russia does not shy away from accusations against OSCE personnel. During the invasion of Ukraine by its troops, the authorities in Russia seized more than 70 blue and white OSCE vehicles, valued at almost three million euros. The OSCE has been trying for months to arrange for the vehicles to be returned via Turkey, and officials have sent eight diplomatic memoranda - "verbal notes". OSCE staff met several times with Russian diplomats to discuss the issue, but all to no avail.
In a January letter to the OSCE received by "Spiegel", German public television ZDF and Austrian newspaper "Der Standart", Russian diplomats stated that the vehicles were taken "to the territory of the Republic of Donetsk and the Republic of Lugansk" - illegally occupied Ukrainian territory. A Russian statement claimed the vehicles were seized as "evidence" in criminal cases against several OSCE staff accused by Russia of involvement in "directing fire" on Donetsk and Lugansk.
Observers described the legal cases as "so-called trials". In an interview with "Spiegel", Michael Carpenter, the American ambassador to the OSCE, said that it is "an absolute travesty of justice" that Russia is holding hostage three members of the organization to which it belongs, and "they served in the mission that it approved". OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid, a senior German diplomat, said it was "unacceptable and inhumane".
The tone is getting rougher and distrust is growing. At a meeting of the Standing Committee of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, an institution where representatives of member countries regularly exchange opinions, a Latvian criticized the fact that the Viennese office of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly is headed by a Russian woman whom many suspect, and who has access to countless confidential documents at work. . Critics have described her as "the new Anne Chapman", a Russian spy arrested in the US in 2010 and later released in an exchange of agents in Vienna. For several OSCE members, including Poland and Latvia, this "new Anna" is a clear example of attempted infiltration by spies.
According to media reports, before she took her current job, the Russian woman - who did not respond to Spiegel's request for comment - worked for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She regularly traveled the world with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov or even with President Vladimir Putin. In 2019, she was Putin's translator when he met with Donald Trump at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. An astonishing number of photos of her in skimpy clothes are circulating on the Internet.
Fiona Hill, who for some time advised Trump on Russian issues, believes that this woman was specially chosen to draw the attention of the American president, and Trump's preference for young women is no secret. The Russian embassy to the OSCE did not want to comment, stating only: "These are provocative questions based on rumors."
Roberto Montella, the Italian secretary general of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, rejected those accusations, pointing out that the former translator worked in the OSCE before the Russian aggression. The OSCE hired that woman in 2021, seven years after the Russian occupation of Crimea, which violated international law. Meanwhile, OSCE member state Poland has declared the woman and another Russian OSCE staff member undesirable, saying they are a threat to Poland's security.
Russian diplomats within the OSCE represent a clear security risk, US Ambassador Carpenter claims. "You have somebody who represents a very aggressive state that is engaged in warfare and violates every possible principle of the rules-based international system," he said.
Intelligence services and diplomats of various countries believe that the spy is another Russian working for the OSCE in Vienna. They say the person is believed to be employed by Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR. When contacted, the man, nicknamed "Colonel" by his colleagues in the OSCE, did not comment on these allegations.
"Without a doubt" Russian personnel in the OSCE represent a danger, says Ukrainian Ambassador Chymbaljuk, and not only because of the attitude of those personnel towards cooperation.
"Let's be very clear: Russia is an authoritarian, militarized state, waging an aggressive war - and not for the first time in the last 15 years, led by a president who is internationally wanted for war crimes," he said.
OSCE Secretary General Schmid points out that very few Russians work for the OSCE, either as direct employees or as officials sent from Russia. Moreover, like all staff members, she says, they are required to "represent exclusively the interests of the OSCE and not the interests of their member states, regardless of their nationality."
While the headquarters in Vienna are conspicuously reserved on the matter, the conflict among OSCE member states is public.
When the foreign ministers of all OSCE states were scheduled to meet in Lodz, Poland in December, the Polish government refused to allow Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to attend. Instead, he was represented by the Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE. And there was no final declaration at the meeting, because the members could not agree.
The reason for this disagreement, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba, is clear: the Russian invasion. "Everything has been tried in relation to Russia: appease, appease, be nice, be neutral, engage, and not call things by their right names. The bottom line is that it would be better for the OSCE to continue without Russia," he said.
This is essentially what is already happening in Ukraine. Since Russia refused to agree to the extension of the mandate, there is no longer an official OSCE mission in that country. There is, however, a "Ukraine Support Program" with several dozen OSCE staff members on the ground, funded by donations from 30 member countries, including Germany.
Russia responded in its own way: it sent several delegates under European and American sanctions to the official OSCE meeting in Vienna in February. Among them was Peter Tolstoy, a descendant of Leo Tolstoy who, among other things, is notorious for demanding that Ukraine "return to the 18th century" by bombing.
A number of delegates from other countries responded by wearing blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. When the Russian delegation took the floor, some demonstratively left the hall, while others raised the Ukrainian flag. The message was clear, but it is unlikely that it impressed Russia, "Spiegel" concludes.
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