Speeches and Interviews of the Permanent Representative

STATEMENT BY MR. ALEXANDER LUKASHEVICH,

PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION,

AT THE 1365th MEETING

OF THE OSCE PERMANENT COUNCIL

31 March 2022

On the mandate and budget

of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine

I should very much like to have representatives from the Department of Management and Finance and the Secretariat’s Office of Legal Affairs present in this room. It is important that they hear our arguments.

It seems that the Russian position, which was presented to you yesterday in plain English at the Preparatory Committee, has still not been fully heard or really understood, and so today I will take the liberty of elaborating on the elements of Russia’s approach that have led to this conclusion.

Some historical background. It was Ukraine that, in late 2013 and early 2014, strongly objected to any OSCE involvement in normalizing the situation in the country. The Minister for Foreign Affairs at that time, Mr. Leonid Kozhara, to whom both the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Mr. Didier Burkhalter, and the Secretary General, Mr. Lamberto Zannier, reached out about urgently resolving the issue of a permanent OSCE presence to de-escalate the situation (also by sending written requests to Ukraine), was evasive. The reason: the matter of a different presence in Ukraine was being explored. This too is recorded in the annals of history. If anyone is interested, I can recommend where to read about it. And curiously enough, even after the establishment of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) and its deployment on the territory of Ukraine, for two months the Verkhovna Rada was unable, or rather unwilling, to agree on and ratify a memorandum of understanding with the OSCE. For two months! This is how much Ukraine wanted an OSCE presence on the ground.

I should like to comment further on what the Director of the Secretariat’s Conflict Prevention Centre (CPC), the distinguished Ms. Tuula Yrjölä, said at the Permanent Council on 25 March, especially as she interpreted Financial Regulation 3.04 broadly. We take the position that the aforementioned Regulation cannot be applied to OSCE executive structures with an expired mandate. A different interpretation would be a gross violation of the principles of budgetary discipline and the practice of other intergovernmental bodies, including the United Nations. Budget allotments are always tied to a mandate and their size depends on the programmatic requirements determined by the mandate’s content.

The SMM has no programmatic needs, just as there will be no programmatic activities whatsoever in the light of the termination of its mandate after 31 March. After that date, the hypothetical continuation of its funding at the level of the previous financial year raises serious questions about cost-efficiency. For example, why should participating States have to pay for the existence of the Mission in idle mode at the same rate as during its full-scale deployment? In the absence of any prospect of extension or modification of the mandate, such measures lead only to an unjustified and pointless waste of resources. Above all, this concerns the Mission’s personnel, most of whom will not perform any duties but will continue to be duly paid by our Organization, including in the form of so-called special leave with pay, for an indefinite period of time. We regard such an approach as irresponsible and unacceptable.

Now let me turn to the extension of the contracts of appointed and assigned Mission members until 31 March 2023. What we see here is a refusal to comply with Staff Regulation 4.02, which states that one of the grounds for termination of contracts is an emergency situation requiring the evacuation of the mission and the discontinuation of its activities for a period of at least one month. Such a situation has occurred. Why are contracts not only not being terminated, but even being extended for an entire calendar year? Where in the OSCE Staff Regulations and Staff Rules and the Organization’s staff instructions does it even state that a criterion for extending contracts is distress as a result of “doubt about ... continued employment”, to which the distinguished Director of the CPC referred? Please give us a direct quotation from the normative documents with such a criterion.

In this context, we would remind you that Financial Regulation 1.05 makes the Secretary General accountable to the Permanent Council for the proper management of the Organization’s financial resources. Financial Regulation 6.02 refers to the need to ensure “maximum economy ... in using the resources”, for which the Secretary General is also responsible.

We urge both the Polish Chairmanship and the Secretary General to submit without delay to the participating States a draft technical decision of the Permanent Council on the allocation of the resources necessary for closing down the SMM and the complete termination of its administrative activities within a reasonable time frame. We consider this to be the only priority for the work of the Advisory Committee on Management and Finance at this stage. Until this problem is resolved, work on decisions on other items on the agenda of this body, including the draft OSCE Unified Budget for 2022, will have to be postponed.

We warn that the Secretariat’s refusal to adhere to the internationally recognized principles of budgetary discipline, along with the unjustified, broad and non-consensus interpretation of the OSCE Financial Regulations to suit the political preferences of a whole group of participating States will lead to negative consequences for the programmatic and financial activities of the entire Organization.

As for the comments by the representatives of certain participating States regarding the “unique capabilities of the SMM” with reference to what is happening in Ukraine, capabilities that will allegedly be undermined owing to the failure to extend the Mission’s mandate, we are obliged to note that there has never been any “work on its mistakes” or “debriefing” as to how the SMM ended up in its current state. In accordance with its mandate, the Mission was called upon to facilitate an early cessation of hostilities and the development of dialogue on the ground in the interests of a political settlement, and also to prevent a situation arising that made a resumption of armed confrontation possible. And all this should have been completed with the OSCE’s assistance by the end of 2015 in accordance with the Minsk Package of Measures endorsed by United Nations Security Council resolution 2202.

All the tasks mentioned were also spelled out in the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in numerous decisions of the Trilateral Contact Group that operated until recently, and in the additional ceasefire-strengthening measures of 22 July 2020 agreed upon by the Ukrainian Government and the authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk. The answers are obvious for all to see – in the last years of its existence, the Mission has slid towards highly politicized approaches, predominantly focused on promoting Western narratives about the crisis in Ukraine.

Over the past three years, the SMM has curtailed its contact on the ground with the leadership and most officials of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose representatives had for eight years demonstrated through their participation in the Minsk-based Trilateral Contact Group a willingness to work with the Ukrainian Government to build a joint peaceful future within a united country. But they have been ignored. And the Mission ignored them, preferring to talk to the Russian representatives, who, together with the OSCE representatives in the Trilateral Contact Group, facilitated dialogue between the parties to the conflict.

The SMM’s dialogue with the authorities of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the heads of the municipalities located there came with political preconditions – as recently as 10 December 2021, at an OSCE briefing, the Chief Monitor of the SMM, Mr. Yaşar Halit Çevik, said that he would communicate with the Donbas leadership only if the authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk publicly confirmed their political allegiance to the Kyiv authorities (exact quotes: “If they claim that they are local authorities of Ukraine – of course, we can contact … If they declare that they are local authorities of Ukraine – I am very happy to see them officially … If they declare that they are local authorities of Ukraine – tomorrow I will go and visit them”). None of this is consistent with United Nations Security Council resolution 2202, nor with the Package of Measures, nor with the mandate of the Mission itself, which included the task of (and I quote) “establish[ing] contact with local, regional and national authorities, civil society, ethnic and religious groups, and members of the local population”. In other words, to facilitate dialogue in the interests of peace and stability, which has not happened. Incidentally, again some historical background: during the negotiations on the mandate in 2014, it was Ukraine that categorically refused to include this very formula in the SMM mandate, namely that the SMM would be engaged in establishing dialogue. What kind of peace could we talk about back then?

The Mission point-blank failed to notice the increasing Russophobia in Ukraine and the aggressive Ukrainian nationalist idea. Things were not called by their proper names. Torchlit neo-Nazi marches with xenophobic slogans were classed as “patriotic gatherings” or events “under patriotic banners”. Inconvenient facts for the Ukrainian Government and the Ukrainian armed forces were often glossed over or hidden from the eyes of the general public in restricted-access reports, while any notional “faults” of the Donbas representatives that warranted consideration were examined under a microscope. A detailed summary of Russian comments on the SMM’s activities was circulated by us in the form of a non-paper on 14 January this year (PC.DEL/15/22). We recommend that, if anyone has any doubts, they take a look at the facts that we have set out.

The SMM has surprised us much more in the final stage of its time in Ukraine. So far, for example, there has still been no answer to the question as to why the Mission did not report that SMM-badged armoured vehicles had been handed over to the Azov neo-Nazi armed formation in Mariupol at the end of February. They remain stubbornly silent about the circumstances, even though they are well known. Despite our direct questions to both the Chairperson-in-Office and the Secretary General on this subject, no answers have been forthcoming. The only thing that is not surprising is that the Permanent Representative of Ukraine, who is perfectly aware of the problem, keeps shtum about this.

Incidentally, on 20 March, already after the complete evacuation of the SMM from Mariupol, one of the OSCE-badged vehicles was found not in the car park outside the Mission’s office but five kilometres away, near Kirov market. It had been involved in combat operations, as evidenced by the distinctive damage to its hull. Why are you remaining silent on this matter? Will you finally tell us who took this vehicle, who was driving it and shooting out of it?

All of this points to the bias of the Mission, which in recent years has been increasingly used as a tool to shield the Kyiv regime and put pressure on the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities instead of engaging in dialogue. We cannot agree that this has facilitated objective and impartial monitoring of the situation in Ukraine. Such approaches have jeopardized the efforts of the entire OSCE to promote a peaceful settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In addition, we should like to inform you that the Russian Federation will notify the OSCE Secretariat’s human resources service of the termination of the secondment of all its staff to the SMM in connection with the expiry of the Mission’s mandate and the termination of its mandated tasks. We see no need for further consultations on changing the mandate or transferring the Mission to “administrative mode”.

I request that this statement be attached to the journal of today’s OSCE Permanent Council.

Thank you for your attention.