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OSCE top diplomats indulge in empty rhetoric about punishing Russia — Russian diplomat

According to Alexander Lukashevich, the OSCE has "turned into a discussion club not on the topic of how to live but on how to hit Russia and its allies harder"

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. The meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was held in Poland’s Lodz on December 1-2 was reduced to a shallow discussion about possible instruments for punishing Russia in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Friday.

"As for what happened in Lodz on December 1-2, it is an oppressive feeling from the attempt at turning the OSCE into a Euro-Atlantic "Russophobic gathering" to begin to have it out with Russia and Belarus in the context of the developments in Ukraine. But it did not happen and the ministers were indulging in empty talk about how to find instruments for punishing Russia for what has happened in the context of Ukraine rather than about how to build and restore the spirit of Helsinki," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

According to the Russian diplomat, the OSCE has "turned into a discussion club not on the topic of how to live but on how to hit Russia and its allies harder." "We have been facing this phenomenon for years now," he stressed, adding that such lopsided dialogue again yielded no results and the ministerial meeting was to no avail.

Earlier, the Polish foreign ministry denied entry visas to the Russian delegation led by Sergey Lavrov. The Russian foreign ministry condemned the decision as unprecedented and provocative, and one which is incompatible with the status of the organization’s chairperson-in-office. Russia’s delegation to the meetings in Lodz is led by Permanent Representative Alexander Lukashevich.

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