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The article “An emergency platform: why Russia needs the OSCE” by Lead Researcher for the Center for Situational Analysis of the IMEMO, Head of the Group for Strategic Assessment of the IMEMO, Cand.of Science (Politics) Sergey Utkin was published on the website of the Russian edition of “Forbes”.

Bred from the decisions of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in the year 1975, the OSCE is an almost ideal format in terms of equal rights for participants. However, a bit of the political context can immediately destroy the idyll. The EU and the NATO countries do not forget about their allied obligations and the positions developed within the framework of those organizations, while interacting in the OSCE.

36 of the 57 OSCE participants are the members of the key Western alliances. Six more are European microstates and neutral Switzerland, located in the same Western community. Post-Soviet Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia tend to integrate into Euro-Atlantic structures and often show even greater solidarity with the Western foreign policy stances than some members of the EU and NATO.The Balkan Bosnia and Serbia retain their specifics, but in the future they also want to be in the European Union. There remain nine post-Soviet countries, including Russia, and Mongolia, which recently joined the OSCE...

 Full text (in Russian)