Russian official diagnoses OSCE troubles

Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko gave an extended interview to the Voice of Russia on multilateral security instruments in the region. He offered some fairly typical Russian fare on NATO, which he argued has violated committments made to Moscow: NATO had committed to not positioning its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders and refused ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko gave an extended interview to the Voice of Russia on multilateral security instruments in the region. He offered some fairly typical Russian fare on NATO, which he argued has violated committments made to Moscow:

Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko gave an extended interview to the Voice of Russia on multilateral security instruments in the region. He offered some fairly typical Russian fare on NATO, which he argued has violated committments made to Moscow:

NATO had committed to not positioning its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders and refused to deploy substantial military forces long term on the territory of its new member states. Unfortunately, we see that there are military forces being deployed in the Baltic region. In particular, on the territory of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia new military objects have appeared and NATO aircraft are patrolling the territory. And we cannot ignore that fact in our military planning.

Grushkov also offered this perspective on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe:

[T]he OSCE is gradually turning into some sort of a human rights and democracy organization, which naturally weakens it. First of all, because more efficient organizations already exist in this sphere, in particular, the European Council, which unlike the OSCE has an ability to create legal mechanisms. And secondly, we never agreed that the organization for security and cooperation in Europe would deal with neither security nor cooperation. That is why the OSCE is going through such difficult times.

The OSCE has periodically criticized Russian behavior, including the conduct of recent elections. In July, the Russian foreign ministry blasted the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly for accepting the Georgian characterization of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "occupied territories."

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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