MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. Russia appreciates new Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Feridun Sinirlioglu’s visit to Moscow, while his predecessors shied away from it, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We have to admit that in recent years the OSCE leaders have come up with various excuses not to come to Moscow," he said at a joint press conference following talks with the OSCE secretary general.

"This is why we appreciated the decision of the new OSCE secretary general, who never doubted that communication with the leading members of the organization is mandatory and important for fulfilling the functions of the head of the secretariat."

He said that the last visit of an OSCE Secretary General took place in June 2021, and in early February 2022, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau visited Moscow as Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "Since then, there have been no contacts at this level," Lavrov stated.

The minister also drew attention to the "unenviable legacy" that the current secretary general inherited, because "in previous years, the West had prohibited itself from engaging in dialogue with the Russian Federation and extended this ban to the international organization, which is the OSCE." "There were contacts, of course, but not at all at the level that was customary before them since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act," he said.

"Such actions by the West, which deliberately decided to destroy the principle of consensus and did everything to ensure that the OSCE abandoned neutrality and turned into a Ukrainized instrument of ‘educating’ the Russian Federation, have led to a profound institutional crisis," Lavrov concluded.