Russia will not take part in the OSCE PA session

On February 16, the OSCE PA held a remote coordination meeting of the heads of the parliamentary delegations of the CSTO Member States to the OSCE PA.

The participants of the meeting discussed the coordination of activities of the parliamentary delegations of the CSTO countries on the platform of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

The meeting was opened by Aigul Kuspan, Chairwoman of the Committee on International Affairs, Defence and Security of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. She reminded the participants that the meeting is held on the eve of the upcoming 23rd winter meeting of the OSCE PA, scheduled for February 22-23, 2024.

"As Chairman in the CSTO, Kazakhstan will continue to pursue the progressive development of our Organization in the interests of all Member States. We intend to strengthen cooperation in countering international terrorism, extremism, illicit trafficking in weapons, narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, organized transnational crime, as well as IT crimes. These priorities are also relevant for us on the OSCE platform," Aigul Kuspan noted. 

She added that Astana puts a high value upon multilateral diplomacy in ensuring security not only in the region, but also in the world. 

In his speech, Andrei Savinykh, Chairman of the Standing Commission on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus and Head of the Parliamentary Delegation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus to the OSCE PA, noted that "European security will never be the same as before." According to him, its destruction was caused by the promotion of a one-sided NATO-centric architecture.

"Today we can already state that the security architecture, built with such difficulty by all previous generations, which still remembered the horrors of the great war in Europe, has ceased to work. In fact, the conventional arms control regime has faded into history, security confidence-building mechanisms have been paralyzed, and negotiation formats are not working. It is especially seen on the platform of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which provides an uncontrolled, senseless, irrational dialog; and this is not even a dialog, but an attempt to put pressure on individual countries," stressed Andrei Savinykh.  

He suggested thinking about the agenda that the CSTO Member States can offer to their European "partners", as "the OSCE needs a global and thorough reset."

"This Organization will not be able to exist in the form it used to exist in. And we have to understand that. And we have to think about way to carry out this reset, because the collective West states are now mostly playing a zero-sum game. This means that if one party wins, the other loses," stated the Belarusian parliamentarian.  

Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs and Head of the Parliamentary Delegation of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation to the OSCE PA, said that the Russian side had decided not to participate in the Vienna session of the OSCE PA.

"What was going on in Vienna last year can be confirmed by Mr. Savinykh, who was also there; and many participants of today's meeting also remember the obstruction that the Russian side faced there. This cannot be tolerated any longer. During the speeches of the delegations of Russia and Belarus, the aggressively obedient majority, as I would put it, were stomping their feet, banging their hands on the tables, running around with placards, and shouting, which is absolutely unacceptable for civilized states. And the insults that we heard in our address were simply impossible to tolerate," recalled Vladimir Dzhabarov.

According to him, now the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly "makes a pathetic impression", given that practically everyone there only wants to hear what they are told by the leaders of NATO and the European Union countries, so Russia's attendance at this session is impossible. 

"I hope that our colleagues in the CSTO PA will understand our decision to refuse to participate in this session. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we are leaving the platform of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. If certain changes take place, this Organization still has a chance to return to the foundations of its work," Mr. Dzhabarov emphasized.

The meeting was also attended by Daniyar Tolonov, Chairman of the Committee on Budget, Economic and Fiscal Policy of the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic and member of the parliamentary delegation of the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic to the OSCE PA; Farhod Rahimi, Chairman of the Majlisi Milli of the Majlisi Oli of the Republic of Tajikistan Committee on Coordination Activities of the Majlisi Milli with the Majlisi Namoyandagon, Executive Power, Public Associations, Mass Media and Inter-Parliamentary Relations; Plenipotentiary Representatives of the CSTO Member States: Viktor Rogalev (Kazakhstan), Shabdanbek Alishev (Kyrgyzstan), Mikhail Krotov (Russia), Abdukhalil Gafurzoda (Tajikistan); and representatives of the Secretariat of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly.

On February 13, Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly and Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, noted that the OSCE and PACE are politicized platforms, where the participants constantly talk about democracy, "but do not follow any procedures, rules or principles themselves". He suggested to stop working on the platform of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. According to Vyacheslav Volodin, the work of any interparliamentary structure should be based on the principle of decision-making by consensus, as it is the case in the Parliamentary Assembly of the CSTO, BRICS, SCO, and the Eurasian Economic Community, "when we hear each other and develop decisions taking into account the opinion of our partners."