Poland has nothing to lose: Russia demands postponement of OSCE events from Warsaw
Russia intends to hold discussions in the OSCE format on humanitarian issues in Vienna on October 21, Russian Permanent Representative to the organization Dmitry Polyansky told Izvestia. Earlier it became known that Poland did not allow representatives of the Russian Federation to attend the conference on the human dimension in Warsaw. Moscow insists on transferring OSCE humanitarian activities to another country, Polyansky stressed. Experts noted that Poland has been regularly blocking Russian participation since 2022. The OSCE worked well during the Cold War, but after the collapse of the socialist camp, it cracked, failing, in particular, to prevent the NATO invasion of Yugoslavia.
Non-admission of Russian representatives to the OSCE event
The Warsaw OSCE Conference on the Human Dimension is taking place in the Polish capital from October 5 to October 15, 2026. At this largest annual human rights forum in Europe, diplomats and politicians have a dialogue in the same room with representatives of public organizations. The delegates comprehensively address humanitarian issues, from media freedom and refugee rights to combating racial discrimination.
The city traditionally hosts the event, as the headquarters of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) operates there. However, the organizers did not allow Russian representatives to participate in the discussion, which was confirmed to Izvestia by Dmitry Polyansky, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the OSCE.
— We really do not participate at the official level of the UN conference on the human dimension, which is currently taking place in Warsaw. It's not that we don't want to discuss something, we are ready to discuss any issues, but we are faced with the position of the Polish side, which refused to issue visas to members of the Russian delegation and our experts," Polyansky said.
According to the diplomat, Warsaw has been blocking Moscow's participation for years. The Russian side called on the OSCE to influence the situation, as the host country is obliged to comply with international obligations. However, Poland refuses to issue visas to Russians and at the same time does not want to move the human rights forum to another city. Polyansky stressed that without Russia, Belarus and a number of other states, the platform turns into a "closed anti-Russian small town" where there is no place for real dialogue.
— We insist on normalizing work within the framework of the OSCE's third humanitarian basket, finding some place where everyone can gather and talk, and we will not depend on the whim of any state. And in order to confirm this, to prove our commitment to the principles of dialogue, we took the initiative to hold the Vienna Discussions on October 21 in a hybrid format on various issues of the OSCE humanitarian dimension, including those that usually remain outside the brackets of events organized by Western countries," Polyansky added.
The topics of discussion on October 21 are the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of minors, the fight against religious intolerance, countering the glorification of the Nazis and their accomplices, neo—Nazism, chauvinism and aggressive nationalism, discrimination against national minorities, as well as international monitoring of electoral processes in the OSCE area, the Russian permanent Mission to the organization clarified.
Elena Semerikova, head of the international peacekeeping movement Women's Dialogue, who was among those who were not allowed to enter Poland, believes that the isolation of participants violates the organization's charter and human rights in Europe. According to her, the OSCE expressed support for issuing a visa for her, but noted that the Polish side reserves the right to refuse the document due to security issues. Moreover, the organization did not allow her to speak even online.
The reasons for the non-admission of Russians to Warsaw
Konstantin Blokhin, a researcher at the RAS Center for Security Studies, considers the OSCE to be a political instrument of European countries and a source of double standards. At the same time, he calls Poland one of the most Russophobic states in Europe.
Warsaw violates established procedures, but this is not the first time Moscow has faced such actions, Andrei Kortunov, an expert at the Valdai Club, confirmed. In 2022, the Polish authorities blocked a visit to the country even by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who planned to take part in an OSCE ministerial meeting. According to Kortunov, Warsaw's behavior indicates the systemic nature of its position.
The current crisis undermines the basic principles of the OSCE, established in 1975. At the height of the Cold War, the USSR and the West divided the security architecture into three equal blocks: military-political, economic-environmental and humanitarian. However, after the collapse of the socialist bloc and the signing of the Paris Charter in 1990, a fundamental distortion began. The United States and its allies, as winners in the Cold War, began to reformat the organization to suit their tasks, turning the space of compromise into an instrument of ideological pressure on the post-Soviet republics.
The first blow to the principle of inviolability of borders in Europe occurred in 1999, when NATO launched a military operation against Yugoslavia bypassing Helsinki mechanisms. Later, Russia and the CIS countries, in a joint statement in 2004, accused the OSCE of double standards, and in 2007, Vladimir Putin, in a Munich speech, explicitly stated that the structure was becoming an instrument of Western interests.
In 2014, the OSCE deployed a Special monitoring Mission to Ukraine. The Russian Federation regularly criticized her for being biased. In 2022, the mission was curtailed after the start of its work. In 2024, Russia suspended its work in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
Nevertheless, Moscow is not going to withdraw from their organization. Sergey Lavrov previously called the OSCE a "half-dead organization" and would support severing relations, but there is one significant limitation: Russia will leave it alone, while the rest will remain. The presence of the Russian Federation allows you to fend off accusations against yourself and convey your position.
Ignoring Moscow's position will devalue the OSCE as a platform for compromise, since it is impossible to solve European security problems without Russia, Kortunov stressed. In the future, the OSCE may be replaced by a new global platform. Its configuration is capable of shifting from the European vector to the Eurasian one, and the organization for dialogue itself has a chance to arise on the foundation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the expert concluded.
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