"No Secret" That Minsk Group Right Now Not Meeting Amongst Co-Chairs — U.S. Envoy to OSCE

"I think it’s no secret that the Minsk Group right now is not meeting amongst the co-chairs, and that has to do both because of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine but also for other reasons,"  the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE said on Monday when asked by TURAN's Washington correspondent whether it was time to kick Russia out of the mediation group.

Ambassador Michael Carpenter was speaking to reporters during a special online briefing organized by the State Department's Brussels Media Hub.

According to him, there is currently a peace process that EU Council President Charles Michel is leading with the two sides, and the U.S. "very much supports that process."

The United States has just appointed a new Minsk Group co-chair, Phil Reeker, he reminded. Washington is also "very strongly" engaged bilaterally with both Armenia and Azerbaijan to facilitate wherever and whenever possible, "in very close consultation with our EU colleagues," he added.

"And so our overriding preference when it comes to Armenia and Azerbaijan is to support the normalization between – of relations between the two countries; the opening of transportation and communication corridors in the region; good neighborly relations; and of course, fundamental is the protection of the human rights of all the populations living in the region, including in Nagorno-Karabakh,"  Carpenter said.

Speaking on the U.S. engagement in the South Caucasus, the Ambassador said besides its "very heavily" involvement in the discussions between Baku and Yerevan, Washington is also very engaged in Georgia and it is supportive of the process between Armenia and Turkey.

TURAN also asked the U.S envoy about Russia's participation in the Warsaw Conference on the Human Dimension (HDIM) despite its gross human rights abuses both at home and in Ukraine.

"I don’t know that they necessarily need to be expelled," he said, explaining that the Russians are  "absenting themselves" from HDIM and that it is "yet another indication that they do not want to be held to account by these principles, because we know that they’re violating them."

Nevertheless, he added, NGOs from across the OSCE region, including Russian NGOs, are currently present at the event and "we will stand with civil society even as bleak as the picture is for the nongovernmental organizations that are still remaining in Russia."

"We will continue to speak about Russia’s abuses of human rights and the ways in which Russia’s restricting civil society space," he added.

Asked whether the so-called "partial mobilization" in Russia was in violation of human rights, Carpenter said it’s "pretty clear" that human rights are routinely disrespected across Russia by the authorities.

"And in this case what you’re finding is a very murky, opaque set of rules governing who gets mobilized and who doesn’t. We’ve already seen anecdotal reports that in some of the ethnic minority regions of Russia, the overwhelming percentage of the population is being mobilized, but in other parts of Russia like in Moscow or St. Petersburg, that is not the case," he said.

According to Carpenter, it "clearly appears" to be uneven in terms of who is being mobilized, and "the whole endeavor of mobilization to throw additional human beings as cannon fodder into this illegal war of aggression in Ukraine is premised on what I just said: on the fact that this is a war that is in violation of every single principle of the Helsinki Final Act and of the UN Charter."

"So already the premise of the mobilization is to deploy additional people to, unfortunately, go and attack the innocent, peaceful country of Ukraine," he concluded.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.