Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov plans to visit Malta in December to attend the meeting of the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. to the Vedomosti newspaper on October 31.

If the visit takes place, it will be LavrovThis is Moscow’s first trip to an EU country since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The last time Lavrov visited a EU It was in 2021, when he visited the OSCE meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. He also visited the United Nations General Assembly in New York several times during Moscow’s all-out war.

While the EU and US imposed sanctions on Lavrov in February 2022, they did not impose a travel ban like EU and UK I wanted to stay open diplomatic channels with Russia.

According to the Malta Embassy in Russia, the decision to hold the meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers scheduled for December 5-6 “applies to all (its) members, including the Russian Federation” , writes the Russian newspaper.

In 2023, Lavrov attended the OSCE Summit in North Macedonia, which triggered a division among OSCE members, leading to a boycott of the meeting by the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States.

The OSCE was established in the 1970s as the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which provided a platform for dialogue between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc during the war cold.

In September, Lavrov warned in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Ukraine and its Western allies should not attempt to “struggle for victory with a nuclear power.”

Since the launch of the full-scale invasion, Russia has repeatedly invoked the threat of nuclear arsenal to deter Western military support for Ukraine.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Lavrov called Western attempts to defeat Russia a “suicidal escapade.”

“I am not going to talk here about the absurdity and danger of the very idea of ​​trying to fight for victory with a nuclear power, which Russia is,” Lavrov said. said.

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