How Russia Is Paralyzing Europe's Peace Organization

The long-established Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is threatening to disintegrate because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Critics claim Moscow is infiltrating the organization and sabotaging its work in ensuring European peace and stability.

The threat was hardly veiled: The diplomat from Moscow warned that the long arm of Russia can reach a very long way. "Anyone," he said, can be caught, "anywhere," including diplomats from other countries. His sharp words were directed at a counterpart from Lithuania. At a March 2022 meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an organization whose goal is peace, the Lithuanian had dared criticize Russia's war, thus drawing the ire of his Russian colleague. In the end, the Russian threatened to place his fellow diplomat on trial in Russia, where criticizing the war can result in prison sentences of up to 15 years.

The Wife of a Russian Official

So far, Russian employees at the OSCE have remained unaffected. At the same time, though, some member countries long ago identified staff they deem to be suspicious. For example, the wife of Russia's deputy foreign minister – a man who shares responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine – was still working for the OSCE several months after Moscow's invasion. An interpreter who made headlines for allegedly being set up to target Donald Trump is still working there, as is a man who several security experts long ago identified as a suspected agent, according to DER SPIEGEL's sources.

Is the OSCE falling victim to the Ukraine war? The "OSCE has to learn to live without Russia or (the) OSCE will die together with Russia," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. His government has called for Russia's temporary expulsion from the organization. Such a move wouldn't be unprecedented: In 1992, the organization temporarily expel the Republic of Yugoslavia for several years. Still, some point out that the organization could provide a good forum for rapprochement once the shooting in Ukraine comes to an end.

Critics claim that Russia has made work difficult for the OSCE's staff in Ukraine from the very beginning. At the beginning of 2014, the observers were still documenting the direction from which heavy projectiles were coming, but later, they were only allowed to keep records of where the rockets and shells struck. The question of who fired them thus became a matter of interpretation – and as such fodder for propagandists.

Three OSCE Staff in Custody

Russia, for its part, doesn't shy away from making accusations about OSCE personnel. During the invasion of Ukraine by Putin's troops, the authorities in Russia seized more than 70 blue-and-white OSCE vehicles, valued at almost 3 million euros. The OSCE spent months trying arrange for the vehicles to be returned via Turkey, and officials sent eight diplomatic memos known as notes verbale. OSCE staff also met several times with Russian diplomats to discuss the issue, all in vain.

In a January letter to the OSCE obtained by DER SPIEGEL, German public broadcaster ZDF and Austria's Der Standard newspaper, Russian diplomats stated that the vehicles had been taken "to the territory of the Republic of Donestk and the Republic of Luhansk" – in other words, to illegally occupied Ukrainian territory. The Russian statement claimed that the vehicles had been seized as "evidence" in criminal cases against several OSCE staff members. Russia has accused them of involvement in "directing fire" at Donetsk and Luhansk.

Observers have described the legal cases as "show trials." In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, said it is "absolutely a travesty of justice" that Russia is holding three members of an organization - to which Moscow itself belongs - hostage, and "who were serving in a mission it approved." OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid, a top German diplomat, has spoken of an "unacceptable and inhumane" situation.

The tone is getting rawer, and distrust is growing. At a meeting of the Standing Committee of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, an institution where envoys from member countries regularly exchange views, a Latvian criticized the fact that the Vienna office of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was headed by a Russian woman about whom many have their suspicions. In her post, he noted, she has access to myriad confidential documents. Critics have described her as a kind of new Anna Chapman, a reference to the Russian spy arrested in the U.S. in 2010 and later released in an agent exchange at the airport in Vienna. For several OSCE members, including Poland and Latvia, it is a clear example of attempted infiltration.

According to media reports, before taking her current job, the Russian woman - who did not respond to a request for comment from DER SPIEGEL - worked for the Russian Foreign Ministry. She regularly traveled the world with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or even President Vladimir Putin. In 2019, she served as Putin's translator when he met with Donald Trump at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. There are a striking number of photos of her in skimpy clothing circulating on the internet. Fiona Hill, who advised Trump on Russian issues for a time, believe that the woman was specifically chosen to distract the U.S. president, with Trump's penchant for young women not exactly a well-kept secret in the rest of the world. Russia's OSCE embassy did not wish to comment, stating only: These are "provocative questions" based on rumors.

Sanctions from Poland

Roberto Montella, the Italian secretary general of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, rejected the accusations, pointing out that the former translator had already been hired "before Russian aggression." The OSCE employed the woman in 2021, seven years after the occupation of Crimea in violation of international law. In the meantime, OSCE member state Poland has declared the woman as well as another Russian OSCE staff member to be undesired persons, saying they pose a threat to Poland's security.

Russian diplomats within the OSCE are a clear security risk, argues U.S. Ambassador Carpenter. "You have someone representing a very aggressive state that is engaged in warfare and violating every possible principle of the international rules-based system," he says. Intelligence services and diplomats from diverse countries consider another Russian working for the OSCE in Vienna to be a spy. They say the assumption is that the person is an employee of Russia's SWR foreign intelligence service. When contacted, the man, whom colleagues have nicknamed "Colonel," did not comment on the allegations.

"Beyond all doubt," Russian staff inside the OSCE are a danger, says Ukraine OSCE Ambassador Tsymbaliuk – and not just because of the access they have to confidential information. "Let us be very clear: Russia is an authoritarian, militarized state, waging aggressive war (and not for the first time within the last 15 years), headed by the president, who is currently facing an international arrest warrant for war crimes." OSCE Secretary General Schmid, meanwhile, points out that very few Russians work for the OSCE, either as direct employees or as officials posted from Russia. Moreover, like all staff members, she says, they are required "to represent solely the interests of the OSCE and not those of its participating states, regardless of their nationality."

Whereas headquarters in Vienna has been conspicuously reserved on the issue, the conflict among OSCE member states has been playing out in the open. When foreign ministers from all the OSCE states were scheduled to meet in Łódź, Poland, in December, the Polish government refused to allow Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to enter the country. He was instead represented by his permanent representative to the OSCE. And there was no final declaration at the meeting because the members could not agree on one. The reason for that disagreement, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba, is clear, before then referring to the Russian invasion. "Everything has been tried in regards to Russia: to please, appease, be nice, to be neutral, to engage, not call a spade a spade. The bottom line: It would be better for the OSCE to carry on without Russia."

That is essentially what is already happening in Ukraine. Because Russia refused to agree to an extension of the mandate, there is no longer an official OSCE mission in the country. There is, though, a "Support Program for Ukraine." Several dozen OSCE staff members are on the ground there, financed by voluntary donations from 30 member states, including Germany.

Russia has responded in its own way, sending several delegates to an official OSCE meeting in February in Vienna who are the subject of European and U.S. sanctions. They included Pyotr Tolstoy, the great-great grandson of Leo Tolstoy who is infamous, among other things, for calling for Ukraine to be bombed back "to the 18th century." Quite a few delegates, in turn, responded: They appeared in blue and yellow, the national colors of Ukraine. When the Russian delegation took the floor, some demonstratively left the room, while others raised the Ukrainian flag. The message was clear. But it's unlikely it did much to impress Russia.