Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is planning to visit Malta in December to participate in a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE Ministerial Council), Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Vedomosti.
The Maltese embassy in Russia said the decision to hold the OSCE Ministerial Council in Malta on 5-6 December “applies to all members of the organisation, including the Russian Federation”.
At the same time, the diplomatic mission did not comment on the situation regarding EU sanctions against Lavrov. The OSCE secretariat said it had nothing to add to the information from the Maltese embassy.
This will be the first time Lavrov has visited an EU country since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The last time the head of the Russian foreign ministry visited the EU was in 2021 at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Stockholm.
Lavrov, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, is on the EU’s individual sanctions lists.
Sanctions mean freezing assets in the EU, if any, while at the same time, as Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said at the time, the EU has given Russian leaders the option of entering the EU.
At the same time, Poland, which held the OSCE chairmanship in 2022, refused to allow Lavrov to attend the Lodz Ministerial Council. The Russian delegation at the time was led by Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich.
The decision to elect Malta as OSCE Chair for 2024 instead of Estonia was taken unanimously at the 2023 Foreign Ministers’ Council in North Macedonia, where Lavrov participated.
European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said at the time that “there are exceptions to all sanctions”.
His presence in Skopje led Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine to refuse to attend the event.
Of the NATO countries, Malta is not a member, but Lavrov has made several visits to Turkey and the US, where the UN is based, since the invasion of Ukraine began./ The Geopost/
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