Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is set to visit Malta next month to participate in a high-level meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
This will be his first trip to an EU country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The meeting, which will take place on December 5-6, is a gathering of the OSCE’s Council of Foreign Ministers.
Lavrov’s planned attendance, reported by Russian daily Vedomosti, is a rare instance of engagement between the EU and Russian officials amidst strained relations over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Although the EU imposed sanctions on Lavrov due to his involvement in the war, it has not enforced a travel ban, signaling a continued interest in maintaining diplomatic channels with Moscow’s top diplomat.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed to Vedomosti that Lavrov intends to make the trip, while Malta’s Embassy in Russia noted that formal invitations to the December meeting would soon be extended to all OSCE delegations.
The last time Lavrov visited an EU country was in December 2021, when he traveled to Stockholm for an OSCE event prior to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
More recently, in 2023, Lavrov attended an OSCE ministerial in North Macedonia. The visit, however, was met with controversy, as Kyiv and several EU member states, including Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, boycotted the meeting in protest of his participation.
Bulgaria allowed Lavrov’s plane to cross its airspace for the trip, a decision that drew criticism from Ukraine.
