Poland declines to issue Russian officials visas to attend the OSCE meeting on December 1-2.

For the purpose of attending an OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) summit scheduled to take place in the Polish city of Łódź on December 1 and 2, the Polish government will not provide representatives of the Russian Federation Schengen visas.

Lukasz Jasina, a spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has confirmed the decision.

Jasina declared, "We are not giving them visas."

The OSCE Rules of Procedure and the decisions of its policy-making bodies, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, have been violated by the decision, which it has labeled "an unprecedented and inflammatory step."

Following Poland's decision, the Russian MFA released a statement accusing Poland of "destroying the foundations of the OSCE" over the previous year and declaring Poland "incapable" of serving as OSCE Chairman.

According to the Russian MFA, "Polish authorities prevent the organisation from fulfilling its functions effectively: first, they denied Russian parliamentarians the opportunity to participate in an autumn session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (Warsaw, November 24-26), and now they grossly violated our delegation’s rights at the ministerial meeting."

It continues by saying that Poland is "pushing the OSCE into the abyss," preventing it from achieving the major goals for which it was created, namely the improvement of security and the promotion of collaboration between the participating countries.

The Ministry has also demonstrated its conviction that other OSCE officials will support Russia's stance on this matter, and in order to demonstrate this, the Ministry on November 18 submitted a matching inquiry to other OSCE member states.

In response, the Polish OSCE Presidency published a picture of a building in Ukraine that had been destroyed by Russian airstrikes and referred to the invasion as "an unprovoked full-scale war."

"The decision by Russia, as a participating State of the OSCE, to wage an unprovoked full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine is an unprecedented step. During all of this year, instead of working to strengthen the OSCE, Moscow has persistently destroyed its foundations," according to a tweet sent alongside the image on the official account of the Polish OSCE Chairmanship 2022.

Due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 of this year, Poland has been one of the strongest proponents of sanctions against it. On September 26, the Polish government issued an entry ban on all Russian nationals, including those with current Schengen visas. On September 19, Poland, along with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, stopped granting Schengen visas for Russian citizens.

By fLEXI tEAM