The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe could play a major role in monitoring a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, Switzerland’s foreign minister said in an interview out Sunday.
Switzerland will chair the OSCE in 2026 and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said Bern wants to focus on confidence-building measures, and preparing for a possible truce between Moscow and Kyiv.
“There are already concrete considerations on this: the organisation is capable of deploying several dozen people at short notice. The OSCE could observe the ceasefire, monitor the ceasefire line, monitor elections, and so on,” Cassis told SonntagsBlick newspaper.
“But the front line currently stretches for 1,300 kilometres — the OSCE alone is too small to monitor its entire length. This would require a significant commitment from the participating states.”
Cassis said US President Donald Trump might be able to engineer a ceasefire deal quickly.
“Something like that can happen very suddenly — as with the Gaza deal. My goal is for us as the OSCE to be ready. As soon as there is a deal, we want to be able to push a button and get started.”
He said that as a first step, a fact-finding mission would need to deploy to Ukraine and return with a diagnosis of the situation, from which the OSCE could quickly initiate the next steps.
Founded in 1975 to ease tensions between the East and the West during the Cold War, the OSCE counts 57 members from Europe, central Asia and North America, including the United States, Ukraine and Russia.
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Cassis said Russia was violating the OSCE’s fundamental principles, having launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, Moscow has not left the organisation, nor been expelled, indicating that the OSCE “remains important for dialogue with Russia — even if that dialogue is diminished”.
Cassis said he would draw the attention of the major powers to what the OSCE could do in terms of cooperation and the channels it could use.
“The OSCE must be ready to act as soon as the opportunity arises — even if, at the moment, the possibilities are limited,” he said.
Three days of talks between Ukrainian and US officials produced no apparent breakthrough on Saturday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky committing to further negotiations toward “real peace”, even as Russia launched another series of drone and missile strikes on its neighbour.
