The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) marks the 50th anniversary of its foundation next year. Last week, after months of wrangling, its 57 members meeting in Malta managed to agree on a new leadership team.

The OSCE had been without permanent leadership since early September when the mandate of the previous secretary general and senior officers came to an end, so this is a major breakthrough. The more so when you consider that this meant getting the agreement of Russia and Ukraine and their respective allies and partners.

The OSCE’s new leadership team includes veteran Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioğlu as its secretary general, and Maria Telalian, head of the legal department in the Greek foreign ministry, as director of the human rights office. The current Dutch ambassador to the OSCE, Christophe Kamp, will serve as high commissioner on national minorities, while Jan Braathu, a Norwegian who has led the OSCE mission to Serbia since January 2021, becomes its media freedom chief.

This means the OSCE leadership, for the next three years, will be made up exclusively from Nato members. Russia’s agreement to this slate of candidates is quite remarkable – as is the fact that an alternative proposal by Malta, which has held the OSCE’s rotating chair in 2024, was discarded.

Its suggestion included Kamp and Braathu, but also named the former Albanian foreign minister, Igli Hasani, as a potential secretary general, and Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, current Georgian ambassador to the OSCE, as nominee for high commissioner. Both were ultimately dropped, partly due to the insistence by Greece and Turkey on their two jointly nominated candidates, Sinirlioğlu and Telalian.

This signals an all-around greater pragmatism among participating states – but it can’t paper over the deep cracks in the organisation. These became apparent during the testy statements by foreign ministers at the annual ministerial council meeting in Malta on December 5-6.

Most of these disagreements were, of course, about the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, accused the west of ignoring what he called the fact that the “Nazi regime in Kyiv has, since 2017, adopted a series of laws that exterminate the Russian language in all spheres”.

His US counterpart, Antony Blinken, responded by calling out Lavrov’s “tsunami of misinformation”. Blinken quoted extensively from Vladimir Putin’s long catalogue of statements denying the existence of a Ukrainian state and people.

As was evident from a range of other statements during the ministerial council deliberations, there is no open support for Russia’s position – except from Belarus. Yet, an east-west divide remains. The European Union and all its member states were unequivocal in the condemnation of Russia’s aggression. But others – Armenia, for example – only generally referred to the importance of OSCE principles, without mentioning Russia’s violation of them.

Because of its relative isolation in the OSCE, Russia has significantly invested in other international forums over the past few years as part of its push to reshape the existing world order. Lavrov, therefore, used the opportunity to note the “mutually beneficial cooperation” within the framework of various other international bodies.

Yet, their effectiveness overall for advancing Russian interests is in doubt. Among them, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and Brics are probably the most advanced endeavours. But these groupings are led by China. They serve Beijing’s interests first and Moscow’s a distant second, at best.

Not only is the OSCE the largest regional security organisation by virtue of its 57 participating states, but it remains the only one in which Russia and the west regularly interact. Lavrov may have warned that “the OSCE exists as long as there is a consensus, as long as each state has guarantees that its interests will be taken into account”. But this should be taken less as a threat of Russia leaving the organisation, and more as an acknowledgement that the Kremlin has few, if any, credible alternatives to remain a relevant diplomatic player in the reshaping of the European security order.

Part of the solution

Meanwhile, expectations remains high that the incoming Trump administration will seek a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine as a matter of priority. So, the question that went unanswered at the OSCE ministerial council was about the future role of the organisation in Ukraine.

The OSCE has a long history in Ukraine and faces a number of opportunities and challenges in supporting the country’s post-war recovery, reintegration and EU accession.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, specifically acknowledged that “the OSCE should play a role in the implementation of the peace formula” advocated by Ukraine. Among the ten points of this plan, the unconditional withdrawal of all Russian forces from territory illegally occupied since 2014 remains Kyiv’s most important, and so far non-negotiable, demand.

Consequently, Sybiha was also unequivocal that there should be no return to the division of Europe into spheres of influence – as there was after the February 1945 Yalta conference, which ushered in the cold war, or the Minsk accords of September 2014 and February 2015. Minsk established a shaky ceasefire that was constantly violated and eventually collapsed in February 2022.

Yet, with the incoming Trump administration pushing strongly for a deal between Moscow and Kyiv, such an outcome of rewarding the Kremlin for its aggression is increasingly likely, despite its inherent risks.

A US-mandated ceasefire in Ukraine may restore a form of cold peace and stability to the European continent for the time being. But it also underlines that, while the OSCE and its participating states may have secured the organisation’s operational and administrative survival, the same cannot be said for the European security order it is meant to guard.