“On December 5-6, the Russian Foreign Minister and a Russian delegation will participate in the next meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council” in Malta, assured the spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, during her daily briefing this Wednesday, December 4.
The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, under European sanctions, had not visited EU territory since the launch of the Russian military assault in Ukraine in February 2022. For the moment, kyiv has not reacted to this news.
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A visit under tension
Sergei Lavrov's last visit to the European Union dates back to December 2021, to Sweden, during a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Since then, the Russian Foreign Minister has only appeared at the UN meetings in New York. Except in 2023, where he went to North Macedonia for another OSCE meeting.
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In reaction to his presence in Skopje, Ukraine, the Baltic countries and Poland boycotted this ministerial gathering. The other participants, for their part, took Sergei Lavrov to task for “ unjustified and unjustifiable aggression » from Moscow to Ukraine.
This new visit, a year later, comes as the hypothesis of a possible peace process around Ukraine has been raised since the election of Donald Trump. If, for the moment, the future president of the United States has not shared his strategy, he remains convinced of being able to resolve the conflict.
