Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to help end the detention of OSCE officials (a) Vadym Golda, (b) Maxim Petrov and (c) Dmytro Shabanov by the Russian Federation.

The UK continues to advocate for the immediate release of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) officials Vadym Golda, Maxim Petrov and Dmytro Shabanov, including at ministerial level, alongside the OSCE Secretary General and the Chair in Office. We recently raised their cases at the OSCE Permanent Council on 27 February 2025.

In 2024, the UK, along with 44 other countries, invoked the Moscow Mechanism to investigate violations related to the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Ukrainian civilians by the Russian Federation. The resulting report highlighted the case of the three OSCE officials and called for their immediate release.