In a sign of protest against the admission of Russia’s representatives to the meetings, Ukraine’s representatives will not take part in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly winter session’s meetings, a member of the Ukrainian delegation has announced.
Ukrainian MP Yevheniya Kravchuk announced Kyiv’s boycott on Ukrainian national television on Feb. 19, noting that while they’ll not take part in any of the official events of the Parliamentary Assembly, which is to be held on Feb. 23-24, Ukraine’s delegation will travel to Vienna.
There are also plans for Ukraine’s delegation to hold a meeting of the delegations of the anti-Putin coalition at the OSCE PA.
Ukrainian representatives plan to negotiate with Kyiv’s partners on what to do, how to get out of this crisis the OSCE or, at least, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, whose winter session will put in the focus the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A joint letter signed by representatives of more than 20 countries previously called on the Austrian authorities and the assembly’s Chairperson to prevent the Russian delegation from participating in the OSCE PA’s winter session.
Stressing that it had legal obligations to do so despite these circumstances, the Austrian Foreign Ministry issued visas to members of the Russian delegation – which includes sanctioned Duma parliamentarians – to take part in the session.
Kravchuk noted that Austria had issued visas to 61 people from the Russian delegation, emphasizing that, apart from the ‘war criminals’, there are also intelligence services and propagandists in the group that will travel to Vienna at the PACE session as mere decoration.
She said that they’re working on protests near the Hofburg together with the Ukrainian community and are coordinating its actions with the delegations of partner countries.
As a reminder, the OSCE PA’s summer session meetings weren’t attended by the delegations of Russia and Belarus because they were not issued visas by the host countries. They also did not participate in the previous meetings of the fall session last year, which took place in the UK and Poland.
