Russian foreign minister to visit EU in his first trip since start of Ukraine war

In his first trip to the European Union since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to attend a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta next month, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova announced on Friday.

The Maltese Embassy in Moscow told state-affiliated business newspaper Vedomosti that the decision to hold the OSCE Ministerial Council on 5–6 December applied “to all members, including the Russian Federation”.

The last time Lavrov visited an EU state was in December 2021, when he attended an OSCE meeting in Stockholm. Since then he has come under EU, US and UK sanctions and has had his European assets frozen, but he remains free to enter the EU to attend OSCE events.

Despite that, when Poland hosted an OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Łódź in December 2022, it refused entry to Lavrov and his delegation, leading Lavrov to accuse Warsaw of steering the OSCE towards “the most miserable place ever” in its history.

While Lavrov attended last year’s OSCE ministerial meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia, a non-EU state, his presence at the event was subject to harsh criticism from Kyiv, and led Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to boycott the meeting in protest.

Russia joined the OSCE in 1975 and has remained a member despite the organisation repeatedly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2024, for the first time in its modern history, Russia declined to invite OSCE observers to the March presidential election, the Russian Foreign Ministry stressing that the electoral process would be “highly transparent” even in their absence.

In June, Russian Senate Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said the Russian parliament would leave the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, adding that the organisation had become “fully Ukrainianised”. However, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s website still lists the Russian delegation among its participant states.