Radio Liberty journalists found among the employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) people close to the Kremlin.
This is stated in the investigation.
In particular, this is Anton Vushkarnyk, a former employee of the Russian Embassy in Washington and now a senior strategic adviser of the OSCE Secretariat, Daria Boyarska, an employee of the International Secretariat of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, who previously worked in the Russian Foreign Ministry and was Putinʼs translator, and Saltanat Sakembayeva, the wife of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Russian Federation Andrii Rudenko. She worked in the General Secretariat of the OSCE.
Anton Vushkarnyk
Anton Vushkarnyk currently works as a senior strategic adviser to the OSCE Secretariat, and previously held a position at the Russian Embassy in Washington. While working at the embassy, he justified the sale of Russian weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Vushkarnykʼs email to a US congressional staffer includes a link to a YouTube video comparing Ukrainian politicians to Nazis. Also in his letters, Vushkarnyk claimed that America was threatened by "homosexual authoritarianism" and praised Stalin.
In 2017, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs nominated Vushkarnyk to the post of senior adviser in the Group of Experts on Strategic Issues (SPSU), which was made up of experts from the Russian Federation, the USA, the EU and Switzerland. This group was founded by then OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger.
In December 2020, Helga Schmid, who dissolved the SPSU, became the Secretary General of the OSCE, but Vushkarnyk retained his position and continues to receive a salary from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Some of Vushkvarnikʼs colleagues who work with him in the OSCE secretariat call him "Colonel", hinting at his connection with Russian special services. In addition, the Austrian police repeatedly recorded Vushkarnyk breaking traffic rules. It was suspected that he was driving drunk, but the man refused an alcohol test.
Darya Boyarska
Daria Boyarska worked as a translator for Russian President Putin at a meeting with US President Donald Trump during the G20 summit in Japan.
Boyarska held a position in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she often accompanied Putin and Sergey Lavrov on foreign trips. Since June 2010, she has periodically translated from Russian into English at the annual sessions of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Later, she was hired as an adviser in the communications bureau. Delegates of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly called Boyarskaʼs hiring and her subsequent promotion opaque.
In February 2021, Boyarska began working for the OSCE. In September 2021, she was appointed head of the Vienna Office of Relations of the OSCE PA. She became the "deputy special representative".
Currently, Boyarska has access to working contacts of the OSCE in Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, as well as in the international secretariat. In addition, it participates in the preparation of official visits of OSCE PA members and in the preparation of election observation missions. Delegates from several countries repeatedly condemned her appointment.
Saltanat Sakembaeva
Saltanat Sakembayeva, who worked at the OSCE General Secretariat in Vienna since 2009, took a photo with the Permanent Representative of Russia to the OSCE Oleksandr Lukashevich in June 2022. Previously, he justified Russian aggression and accused the USA and its allies of trying to "usurp" the work of the OSCE secretariat.
Sakembayeva received the position while she was still a citizen of Kyrgyzstan. In August 2014, she received citizenship of the Russian Federation, and a month later in Vienna she married Andrii Rudenko, who arrived in the Austrian capital in 2011 as the deputy permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the OSCE.
In 2016, Rudenko became the director of the department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He worked in the directions of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine — all these countries were an important part of the OSCE agenda. His wife, Saltanat, had access to information about the activities of the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine and the Trilateral Contact Group for conflict resolution in eastern Ukraine. Sakembayeva was also present at the meetings devoted to other conflicts with the participation of Russia — in Moldova, Georgia and Transcaucasia, she was part of official delegations and attended the meetings of the Council of Ministers of the OSCE member states. According to a diplomat who worked in the OSCE, Sakembayeva "had the opportunity to give information to her husband by phone after work." She worked at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe until July 2022, that is, during the first five months of Russiaʼs full-scale war against Ukraine.