Ukraine: After Geneva and Brussels, the dialogue continues at the OSCE in Vienna
Place in the third and final sequence of an intense diplomatic ballet to defuse the risk of a conflict in Ukraine: the Permanent Council of the OSCE meets Thursday in Vienna to continue the dialogue between Russia, the United States and their European allies.
After tense discussions in Geneva between the American and Russian vice-ministers of foreign affairs, Wendy Sherman and Sergei Riabkov, NATO and Moscow made Wednesday in Brussels the observation of their deep “differences” on security in Europe.
Likewise, no breakthrough is expected in Austria.
“I don’t think there will be any concrete results this week. Our main objective is to establish a dialogue ”, summarizes the American Ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter.
– Rare East-West forum –
“Yes, our positions are poles apart (with Moscow) but that does not mean that we cannot find common ground,” he said on the independent Russian television channel Dozhd. The challenge is to “determine in what forms the discussion can be deepened in the coming months”.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a multilateral platform for East-West discussions resulting from the Cold War, lends itself particularly well to this exercise.
This body is a rare place of exchange of which the United States and Russia are both members.
This is the first meeting of the year on Thursday, in the presence of the ambassadors of the 57 OSCE countries.
After the presentation in the morning by the new Polish Presidency of its priorities, General Secretary Helga Schmid will hold a press conference at 12:30 (11:30 GMT).
– No new Yalta –
Westerners accuse Moscow of having massed in recent weeks some 100,000 soldiers, tanks and artillery on the border with Ukraine to prepare an attack against this country, an intention denied by the Russian authorities.
On the ground, conditions worsened for OSCE observers in areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists, lamented the American ambassador, saying he was “extremely worried”.
Since 2014, the Organization has been responsible for monitoring compliance with the Minsk peace accords in rebel eastern Ukraine.
“The surveillance missions have so far detected nothing abnormal on the territory” but at the border, “it is impossible for us to know what is happening”, warned Mr. Carpenter.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was also alarmist on Wednesday.
“The risk of a new armed conflict is real. It is up to Russia to come out of the crisis. It must engage in de-escalation, ”he argued.
For its part, Moscow affirms that this military deployment is a reaction to the presence considered growing and threatening of NATO in what it considers to be its zone of influence.
Russia also refuses any enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance to include countries within its sphere of influence, such as Ukraine.
“Russia has proposed fundamentals that closely resemble a return to the pre-1975 status quo, that is to say a Yalta II format actually leading to the resurgence of blocs, of areas of influence,” he said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is worried in an interview with AFP.
“For us, this is unacceptable”, he hammered, echoing the words of the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell who accused Moscow of wanting to “reconstitute the Soviet geopolitical glacis in Europe and attempt a decoupling between the United States and Europe ”.
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