Russia has failed to respond within the required 48-hour time period to a Ukrainian request for an official explanation via the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) on its unexplained military manoeuvres near its borders.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced late Sunday that Moscow didn’t abide by a provision in the OSCE’s Vienna document on “confidence- and security-building measures” to provide a response.
Kyiv on Feb. 11 triggered paragraph three of the Vienna document, which stipulates that “participating states” – including Ukraine and Russia as members – “co-operate with each other about any unusual and unscheduled activities of their military forces outside their normal peacetime locations which are militarily significant…”
“Russia failed to respond to our request under the Vienna Document,” Kuleba tweeted.
He continued: “Consequently, we take the next step. We request a meeting with Russia and all participating states within 48 hours to discuss its reinforcement and redeployment along our border and in temporarily [Russian-] occupied Crimea.”
Kuleba added that “if Russia is serious when it talks about the indivisibility of security in the OSCE space, it must fulfil its commitment to military transparency in order to deescalate tensions and enhance security for all.
OSCE’s Vienna document was devised during the ending days of the Cold War in 1990 and was most recently revised in 2011.
“The document is an agreement between 57 states, all party to OSCE. The documents consists of a set of confidence- and security-building measures to enhance transparency, including an annual exchange of military information, on-site inspections and notifications of certain types of military activities,” the Washington-based Brookings Institute writes.
However, in 2014, Russia also didn’t adhere to its provisions when amassing troops to Ukraine’s east right before invading Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
“Ukraine’s concern regarding Russian military activities and intentions are very real,” the United States’ mission to the OSCE wrote in April 2021, when Russia started massing troops along its neighboring country’s borders last year.
“In 2014, Russia similarly failed to provide detailed information about its unusual military activities on Ukraine’s border in response to Ukraine’s Vienna Document…request and similarly refused to attend meetings to clarify Ukraine’s concerns. It swiftly became clear in 2014 that Ukraine’s concerns were well founded.”
