Bujar Osmani, the current Chairman of the OSCE and Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia, said today that the Russian Federation is a factor of destabilization in the Western Balkans region. Unlike the US and EU support for N.Macedonia and the entire region, Russia does not play the identical role in the Western Balkans, he said.
“The Russian Federation is the one that, with latent and visible steps, through proxy players, continuously destabilizes the region”, Osmani said at the closing of the two-day OSCE Ministerial Council meeting that was held in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.
He gave several examples for his claim, saying that Russia tried to destabilize Montenegro through an attempted coup, tried to destabilize Macedonia during the NATO membership referendum, and has been trying to cause problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo through Serbia.
“The Russian Federation is the cause of the problems and instability of this region,” Osmani said, and the only solution for the stability of the entire region is the membership of the countries in the EU and NATO, he claimed.
He called on the Russian Federation to stop the military aggression against Ukraine and withdraw its troops and military equipment from the Ukrainian territory.
