Ukraine looks to have faced down both the Kremlin and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe over the issue of Russian election observers at its presidential election in March.
The OSCE was forced to change stance after Ukraine adamantly refused to accept Russian observers of the March 31 vote, and its parliament on Feb. 7 passed a law banning them from being accredited to the OSCE mission.
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced a day later that Russia had decided not to send its observers to Ukraine.
And the OSCE, while expressing regret over the Ukrainian authorities’ position, also backed down.
“The Ukrainian authorities have made it clear that Russian citizens will not be accredited, and there is no way to observe without such accreditation,” Thomas Rymer, spokesperson at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights or ODIHR, said on Feb. 8, Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported.
Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, director of the OSCE ODIHR, said in a statement issued by the organization on Feb. 7 that she regretted the Ukrainian authorities’ decision. She said that observers sent to take part in election observations missions do not represent their respective countries, but rather the entire OSCE.
However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in a statement on Twitter on Feb. 8 said it was wrong to let the citizens from a country that was de facto waging war on Ukraine observe its elections.
“Official observers from Russia – the aggressor state – have no place in observing the elections in country who is a victim of such an aggression,” Klimkin wrote. “Even trying to suggest it is politically, morally and legally wrong. Full stop.”
All the same, Miroslav Lajčák, and Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE and Slovak Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, said the Ukrainian parliament’s decision was not in the interests of his organization, or of Ukraine.
“The independence, impartiality and professionalism of ODIHR’s election observation is crucial,” Lajčák said on Feb. 8, according to a Slovak Foreign Ministry statement.
“I’m convinced that ODIHR’s request for accreditation of all its observers is in the best interests of both the OSCE, and Ukraine and its people.”
Meanwhile Russian authorities are still fuming about the exclusion of Russian observers from the ODIHR observer mission, casting Kyiv in the role of villain in the affair, and claiming it would damage the OSCE’s credibility.
“We hope that in Vienna (where the OSCE is headquartered) they will be able to induce Kyiv to behave in a civilized manner and to comply with its OSCE commitments,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Kremlin-controlled news agency RIA Novosti on Feb. 11.
“Otherwise, irreparable damage will be caused to the credibility of the organization and its standards.”
