Election mission: OSCE may deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine

The OSCE may deploy peacekeepers or a monitoring mission in Ukraine. This was reported to Izvestia by the press service of the organization's Parliamentary Assembly. However, this issue will require the consent of all OSCE participants, including the Russian Federation. Earlier, US President Donald Trump said he considered it necessary to send peacekeepers to Ukraine in a format that would suit all parties. Moscow is against the deployment of European peacekeeping forces there, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. About why the West is so eager to deploy a contingent in Ukraine and why the OSCE's selective approach is not suitable for this, in the Izvestia article.

The OSCE's role in resolving the conflict in Ukraine

The OSCE may send an armed peacekeeping contingent similar to the UN contingent to Ukraine, the press service of the Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of the organization told Izvestia. Such a decision will require the consensus of all members.

The OSCE has never deployed traditional peacekeeping forces in the sense of an armed contingent similar to those of the United Nations, but theoretically it is possible. At the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co—operation in Europe) summit in Helsinki in 1992, the possibility of deploying peacekeeping operations, including military elements, was specifically mentioned if all OSCE participating states agreed," Parliamentary Assembly spokesman Nat Perry told Izvestia.

At the same time, there are currently no substantive discussions on the deployment of peacekeeping forces at the OSCE PA site. At the same time, its participants are discussing the issue of strengthening the OSCE's role in resolving the conflict in Ukraine, the Parliamentary Assembly added.

— I have not heard OSCE parliamentarians raise the specific issue of the deployment of peacekeeping forces, but there have been many discussions on how to ensure a meaningful role for the OSCE and its Parliamentary Assembly in general, including through fact—finding visits, confidence-building measures or monitoring missions, he said. the representative of the OSCE PA.

A possible OSCE peacekeeping or monitoring mission would require the consensus of all 57 OSCE participating states, including Russia. The decision will be made at the government level, and in this case the Parliamentary Assembly can only adopt recommendatory resolutions on this issue. By the way, since 2022, the OSCE countries have been hindering the work of the Russian delegation to the PA, so in the summer of 2024, the State Duma and the Federation Council decided to suspend participation in the work of this body.

In recent years, the OSCE has thoroughly discredited itself because it took a unilateral position on the Ukrainian conflict and often did not see abuses and outright crimes on the part of the Ukrainian authorities and the military, Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor of the MGIMO Department of Political Theory, told Izvestia.

It is important that the OSCE has no experience in organizing peacekeeping contingents. The organization's monitoring missions and centers are located in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Montenegro. A special monitoring mission (SMM) has also been operating in Ukraine since 2014, and its mandate expired on March 31, 2022. Russia refused to extend the SMM's permit because it had become "an instrument of the foreign and domestic policy of the Ukrainian authorities" and was biased in its work.

Can they send peacekeepers to Ukraine

The issue of sending foreign troops to Ukraine as a peacekeeping contingent began to be discussed again against the background of negotiations between the Russian Federation and the United States. Paris and London are most actively promoting this idea. French President Emmanuel Macron noted that troops should be deployed in Ukraine after the ceasefire. Bloomberg reported that it is planned to deploy up to 30,000 soldiers in major cities, ports and critical infrastructure facilities in Ukraine in order to take them under control.

The peacekeeping forces will definitely not unite under the NATO flag, as this would require consensus among the alliance's members and would be an unacceptable option for Russia, the Washington Post reported. It is important that this proposal does not find support among all members of the North Atlantic Alliance — in February, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that Bratislava was against the deployment of troops in Ukraine and was not going to allow it to join NATO. Viktor Orban, the head of the Hungarian government, shares a similar opinion.

At the same time, the leadership of some Western countries understands that without taking into account Russia's position, the unilateral deployment of troops will become a new escalation of the conflict. For example, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said that the deployment of a large Western peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine is impossible without Russia's consent. US President Donald Trump spoke in a similar way, noting that the deployment of peacekeepers in Ukraine is necessary, but the format of the contingent should suit all parties.

However, the positions of Washington and Moscow differ on this issue. Russia is not considering any options for deploying European peacekeepers in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference following the Doha talks on February 26. The Foreign Minister stressed that the approach imposed by the Europeans, namely France and the United Kingdom, is aimed at further intensifying the conflict and suppressing any attempts to calm it down.

— Macron stated in Washington about the need for an urgent truce, the deployment of these peacekeeping forces, and then, they say, let's talk about territories, the fate of people, and other principles of settlement. This is guile. We cannot agree to an agreement that is aimed at achieving a single goal - to pump Ukraine with weapons again," Sergey Lavrov stressed.

If the decision to deploy a peacekeeping mission is agreed upon by all parties, then some kind of more neutral organization will be needed, Ivan Loshkarev believes. In his opinion, it could be the Conference on Interaction on Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA), the Secretary General of which recently visited Moscow.

— The organization, created on the initiative of Kazakhstan, is still in a slightly amorphous state, but it was created just for a dialogue on security issues between a wide range of participants, the expert emphasized.

The activities of the UN mission could be the most legitimate, since it is a universal organization that sets standards for peacekeeping. At the same time, such missions are expensive, and given the shortage of funds in the UN budget, this is probably not the most likely option.

Finally, there are still options involving the CIS, which has previously had peacekeeping operations in the former Soviet Union, as well as a peacekeeping or observation contingent from the BRICS or SCO, Ivan Loshkarev summed up.

BRICS has no experience in sending peacekeeping missions, however, it is worth noting that many countries through this association have repeatedly taken initiatives on the Ukrainian settlement. Chinese President Xi Jinping recently informed Vladimir Putin about the upcoming meeting of the Friends of Peace group at the UN in New York. In September 2024, China, Brazil and other countries of the Global South announced the creation of a platform, the participants of which expressed their desire for constructive and rational dialogue.

The SCO also has no experience in peacekeeping. However, security issues are among the priorities of the organization's activities. The military of the SCO member states conduct joint exercises, and the idea of the structure's participation in UN peacekeeping operations has been repeatedly expressed.