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Russian envoy criticizes OSCE’s reaction to Starobelsk attack as provocative, hypocritical

Dmitry Polyansky stressed that "the comment in English was phrased very carefully but it did not contain even a hint of condemnation"

Russian Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Dmitry Polyansky Valery Sharifulin/TASS

Russian Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Dmitry Polyansky

© Valery Sharifulin/TASS

VIENNA, May 26. /TASS/. Russian Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Dmitry Polyansky criticized the reaction from Switzerland that holds the OSCE’s rotating chairpersonship to the recent Ukrainian attack on a college in Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as provocative.

Russia received a response to its demand to immediately condemn Friday’s Starobelsk college attack only on Monday, the diplomat lamented. "The comment in English was phrased very carefully but it did not contain even a hint of condemnation. Instead, it emphasized in a provocative way that the site on which the strike was `reportedly’ delivered is on `temporarily occupied Ukrainian land’," Polyansky wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to him, the Swiss "cunningly" claimed to convene a special meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council even as the Organization decided to do so actually to discuss the `Russian aggression’ following a massive Russian attack on Kiev and the adjacent region. "Such hypocrites are ‘running the show’ at the OSCE today," he concluded.

The Ukrainian military launched drones at the academic building and dormitory of the Lugansk Pedagogical University’s Vocational College in the city of Starobelsk in the early hours of May 22. As many as 86 students aged from 14 and 18 years were inside at the time of the attack. According to the latest official reports, 21 people were killed and over 40 more wounded.

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