​The Kremlin condemns Poland’s decision not to grant Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a visa to participate in the meeting of heads of diplomacy of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), reports Interfax.

Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov said during a press conference on Monday that such decisions “can hardly cause discomfort for our country and even more so for Sergey Lavrov.”

At the same time, he added that “there is no doubt that this is a big headache for the OSCE as an organization.”

Peskov also criticized the OSCE during the briefing.

“Let’s remember the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It was the OSCE that rejected Russia’s constructive proposal for a structured and forward-looking discussion on security issues,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said.

Sergey Lavrov, persona non grata in Poland

His comments came after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw announced last Friday that it had refused to grant visas to members of the Russian delegation to attend the December 1-2 meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers in Łódź.

A day later, a source in the rotating OSCE chairmanship, currently held by Poland, told AFP that the Russian delegation should not “include individuals who have been sanctioned by the European Union” following the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24.

“We expect that the Russian Federation will choose the members of its delegation in accordance with the current regulations,” the same source explained to AFP.

The EU has frozen the European assets of Sergei Lavrov since February 25, and Russia’s foreign minister was one of the first officials in Moscow to be sanctioned over Russia’s aggressive war.

Sergey Lavrov also had problems obtaining a visa for the UN summit, which was held in New York on September 20-23, but the authorities in Washington finally allowed the Russian minister to enter the United States.

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