| The US acts in Ukraine without regard to the OSCE Recently, the coordinator of OSCE projects in Ukraine with the rank of ambassador, American David Nicholas, presented a report on his activities to a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna. It turned out that Ambassador Nicholas considers the key goal of his “field mission” to be “preparing Ukraine for integration into Euro-Atlantic structures, taking into account plans for the development of cooperation between Kyiv and NATO and the European Union.”
The American speaker amazed his colleagues gathered in Vienna not only with the Euro-Atlantic focus of his activities, but also with his completely undiplomatic emotionality. Not having cooled down from the fervor of the Ukrainian election passions, the high-ranking OSCE official completely forgot that all decisions in the OSCE are made by consensus. His speech boiled down to the thesis: “I am implementing in Ukraine those projects that I agree on with the local authorities, regardless of the opinions of other OSCE participants.” At the same time, Mr. Nicholas suddenly mentioned Russia.
The American ambassador did not draw the attention of his colleagues to his generous project of “assisting elections” in Ukraine. After all, the mysterious off-budget financing of this project was carried out outside the OSCE regulations. Let us clarify that the regulations require the approval of even “field missions” established at the request of the host party with all members of the organization.
This is not the first time Mr. Nicholas has demonstrated such “independence.” Back in July, he announced that his mission would work “exclusively at the invitation of the host party,” despite “reproaches” from OSCE members. The US representative explained his decision rather cynically: “The answer would take a lot of time and effort. We have no central body other than the Permanent Council. And he always speaks with the consent and on behalf of all 55 countries.”
The financial, geographical and functional crisis of the OSCE manifested itself largely in light of the events in Ukraine. It is not without reason that quite recently Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned about the danger of the OSCE colliding “with a crisis of its identity” in the course of multilateral cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic space. Katerina LABETSKAYA |
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