"Russia is prison of peoples": Kuleba calls on OSCE to protect national minorities in Russia
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to address the issue of national minorities in the "prison of nations" - Russia.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy said this at a joint briefing with the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Maltese Foreign Minister Ian Borg, in Kyiv, Censor.NET reports with reference to Ukrinform.
According to Kuleba, the protection of the rights of national minorities in Russia was another topic of the talks.
"It's not just the Ukrainian minority. The recent events in Ufa, Bashkortostan, have shown that Russia, as the classic said, is a prison of nations. The Bashkirs stood up to defend an activist whom the Kremlin is judging for his stance against the war and for supporting Bashkir culture and identity," the minister said.
The Ukrainian foreign minister also noted that Moscow is actively mobilizing national minorities to die in Ukraine, and this pursues two goals: continuing aggression and conducting ethnic cleansing on its own territory.
In his opinion, the OSCE has tools to protect the rights of national minorities, including the institution of the High Commissioner on National Minorities.
"We believe that we need to deal closely with this issue. In this regard, I would like to remind you of the recently signed decree of the President of Ukraine on the territories of the Russian Federation historically inhabited by Ukrainians. It refers to both Ukrainians and other peoples enslaved by Russia. We call on the OSCE to make the issue of protecting minority rights a priority on the OSCE human dimension agenda," Kuleba said.
He also called on the international organization to respond to "another farce" that Russia is preparing in the temporarily occupied territories and is going to call elections.
