Sergei Lavrov will attend an OSCE meeting in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, later this week.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov plans to travel to North Macedonia this week to attend a conference. It would be his first visit to a NATO member country since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine.
Russia is one of 57 members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), created during the Cold War to defuse tensions between East and West.
North Macedonia, which holds the rotating presidency of the group, has invited Sergei Lavrov to a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers which will begin Thursday in Skopje, the capital of this small landlocked Balkan country.
NATO members banned Russian flights after Moscow launched its military action in Ukraine in February 2022. To reach North Macedonia, the Russian minister’s plane will have to cross the airspace of Bulgaria or the Greece, which also belong to the Western military alliance.
The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it had authorized Sergei Lavrov’s plane to fly over Bulgarian airspace.
This authorization was granted following a request from North Macedonia.for participation in the meeting of the OSCE Council of Ministers in Skopje of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, who falls under exceptions to the application of the EU sanctions regime against him“, we can read in the statement.
Permission, however,does not apply to members of its delegation, who are also sanctioned by current EU law, which the Bulgarian response note explicitly mentions“.
In Moscow on Monday, Sergei Lavrov said his office had received requests for bilateral meetings from several foreign ministers from other countries who planned to visit Skopje. “Of course we will meet everyone“, did he declare.
His deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, told reporters that the minister was, however, not going to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is also expected to attend the OSCE foreign ministers’ meeting.
Sergei Lavrov said the security situation in Europe is more dangerous today than at any time during the Cold War. In the past, he argued, the Soviet Union, the United States and their NATO allies sought to “contain their rivalry through political and diplomatic practices“and never expressed”such serious concerns about their future, their physical future“.
“Today, these fears are all too common“, he adds.
Sergei Lavrov further clarified that Moscow was not thinking of renewing ties with Europe, but rather of “protect us in all key sectors of our economy, our life in general and our security“.
This defiant attitude appears to reflect Moscow’s hope that Western support for Ukraine may fade with upcoming elections in the United States and Europe, the war between Israel and Hamas and the state of battlefield, where the Ukrainian counter-offensive has not made significant progress.
Sergei Lavrov said that while some Western countries may want to freeze the conflict to give Ukraine time to rearm, “we will think about all these offers and evaluate them ten times to see how much they are in line with our interests and how reliable these European counterparts are“.
“They have damaged their reputation very, very badly“, declares Sergei Lavrov, but maybe not yet completely“.