Calay News
Vienna witnessed a sorry scene when the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation was holed up in a hotel while the Russian delegation attended the OSCE winter assembly with the acquiescence of the Austrian authorities, who, for the sake of the Alpine country’s neutrality, ignored the request made earlier this month by more than twenty member countries and issued entry visas to the Russian parliamentarians. Six of the nine Russian delegates attending the meeting were on EU sanctions lists. Led by Pyotr Tolstoy, the Russian deputies set foot on EU soil for the first time since the beginning of the invasion, unlike the OSCE assemblies held in Poland and the UK last year, countries that did not allow them entry.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Mykyta Poturarev, waited until the last minute for Austria to reverse its decision. Poturarev, frustrated and out of the hotel, called the OSCE’s current state “dysfunctional” because Russia has repeatedly vetoed the new budget. In addition, he called for a reform of the international organization and the creation of a mechanism that would enable the OSCE to respond to fundamental violations of the Helsinki Protocol, a flexible and effective mechanism that should not be tailored to Russia or Belarus but should influence countries that are taking a potentially dangerous path.
During the assembly, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly, Margareta Cederfelt, called for a minute’s silence for the victims of the war and criticized Russian aggression, which violates all principles of international law. In the presence of the Russian delegates, the chairman of the Austrian National Council, Wolfgang Sobotka, also proclaimed “our undivided solidarity with the government of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people” and stressed that “it is the duty of OSCE members not to close the door to diplomacy.”
However, these gestures were not enough for the US congressmen, Democrat Steve Cohen and Republican Joe Wilson, who criticized the hosts for ignoring the letter sent by the parliaments of Poland, Lithuania, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, and Great Britain, asking that the Ukrainians be spared from having to sit at the same table as the aggressors or otherwise be excluded from the meeting.
