Polyansky spoke about non-public contacts with Europeans on the sidelines of the OSCE

Russia maintains non-public contacts with individual European diplomats on the sidelines of the OSCE and is trying not to completely destroy what remains of the relationship, said the Russian permanent representative to the organization Dmitry Polyansky.

“I don’t know to what extent Europe will be able to become healthy again, as they say, and throw away Russophobia. I have big doubts. But we are working with them, non-publicly, behind the scenes. There are contacts. They don’t go for it publicly. Perhaps at the next stage this will happen, while we simply convey our position to them consistently. We are trying to somehow, so to speak, preserve the very little that is left so far, and not destroy everything completely,” he said on the air of “First channel".

“On the one hand, there is an obvious request, it is not public, to build or resume some channels of dialogue with Russia. On the other hand, the European Union plays an extremely negative role, these same notorious Callas, von der Leyens and others, the Sikorskys, and others like them, who do not allow the rest to get out of this herd, the shepherd of which is the European Commission,” the diplomat added.

According to Polyansky, many European colleagues openly complain to him on the sidelines; colleagues “with whom we usually do not contact on a bilateral level are making contact here, but they are very much afraid of retaliation from Brussels.”