The Belarusian delegation received its share of insults at the OSCE
The self-proclaimed “President of Belarus” has been invited to speak today at a meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Vienna as a “guest of the organization’s President.” When OSCE PA President Margareta Cederfelt proposed the agenda, the representative of Belarus, Andrei Savinykh, protested.
He explained that Tikhanovskaya does not have the right to speak because Minsk has placed her on an international wanted list, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
When Savinykh spoke, several delegations left the hall. Despite the protest, Sedelfelt still put the agenda with Tikhanovskaya’s speech to a vote.
Then the Belarusian and Russian delegations that supported it left the hall. Savinykh waved goodbye to the presidium.
Only Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy remained in the hall and took the floor.
“Russia is a co-founder of the OSCE. And today you have gone too far in your discourse of hatred towards Russia. You say that there can be no dialogue. But after Russia’s victory, there will be new Helsinki in Ukraine. Who will you talk to then about security in Europe without the largest European country? You can give up hopes for some kind of tribunal, an exception to the regulations. Russia is not losing wars in Europe,” Tolstoy said.
He threatened the OSCE PA with refusal to pay membership fees for 2022 due to the fact that Poland and Great Britain did not allow the Russian delegation to the sessions held in these countries.
“The Russian Federation believes that the annual contribution made by our country in 2022 was not used by us due to the fact that the British and Poles refused to allow us to participate in the assembly. Not admitting Russia under any pretext in 2023 will raise the question of the need to pay our annual contribution. I have a question for Mrs. Cederfelt. What should Russia pay for, being a co-founder of the OSCE and participating in the work of the assembly? Assembly members can change the rules, but this precludes dialogue. What and with whom will you talk? Our country cannot be defeated. We reject the offensive statements proposed by the Americans,” Tolstoy said.
The Russian and Belarusian delegations made a separate statement following the winter session of the OSCE PA.
“We state that the collective West, in blatant contradiction with the original objectives of the OSCE as a platform for equal inter-parliamentary dialogue, seeks to monopolize it in order to promote a geopolitically biased idea of the genesis and development of the Ukrainian tragedy. The Parliamentary Assembly and its governing bodies do not have the right not only to a constantly demonstrated biased approach, but also, in general, to the total Ukrainization of this platform. We demand to stop escalating the atmosphere of hostility and confrontation.
At the same time, we do not call on individual delegations, which clearly demonstrated during the discussions the depth of degradation of their political culture, to engage in self-education. We only want them to realize their responsibility for preserving the remaining channels of communication between the parties to the military-political confrontation that is gaining momentum through no fault of ours,” the statement says.
Yesterday, Latvian MP Rihards Kols allowed himself to swear at the Russian delegation. Also, the Baltic deputies prevented Russian and Belarusian deputies from speaking by waving Ukrainian flags. In addition, during Tolstoy's speech, a significant number of deputies left the meeting room.
In Russia, many experts condemned the Russian delegation for going to Vienna at all.
The Belarusian delegation received its share of insults at the OSCE.