Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said the OSCE talks had consolidated international support for Ukraine in the face of what he called “illegal ultimatums and military pressure from Russia”. He said the country’s western allies shared Ukraine’s position that it should be free to choose which security alliances it joined, including Nato.
“Ukraine will also continue to work actively with partners to implement a comprehensive package to deter Russia from a new wave of war in Europe, which has already begun,” he said, in a comment posted on his ministry’s website.
A volley of bleak statements from Russian senior officials emerged as Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, warned that Europe faced its greatest risk of war in 30 years.
Rau was addressing the 57 nations of the OSCE, an organisation that includes Russia, Ukraine, the United States and European nations. It was the third time this week Russia had discussed security with western countries.
The Polish minister, who has taken over the OSCE chair, told reporters he “cannot say a breakthrough is imminent” in discussions on European security, while pledging to launch a dialogue. “Some of the participating states believe that it’s enough to make a statement and not to participate in debate,” he said, without naming countries.
“It seems that the risk of war in the OSCE area is now greater than ever before in the last 30 years,” Rau had told delegates earlier. “For several weeks we have been faced with the prospect of a major military escalation in eastern Europe.” Russia has mobilised 100,000 troops and placed military hardware along its border with Ukraine, while issuing a series of security demands that Nato has said are impossible to meet, such as removing troops from eastern members of the alliance and a block on any membership application from Kyiv.
Ryabkov said discussions were hitting a dead end. “I do not see any reason to sit down again in the coming days, to gather again and start these same discussions,” he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
“We propose to go step by step through the text, to work on it in order to bring it to a stage where it would be ready to sign. This is impossible today, because on the key elements of these texts, the United States and its allies say categorically ‘no’.”
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