Summit of Bucharest Nine foreign ministers begins in Łódź

"Today in Łódź begins a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Bucharest Nine," Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter on Thursday (March 30) evening.

Foreign ministers of Poland and Romania - Zbigniew Rau and Bogdan Aurescu - welcomed the other heads of diplomacy arriving for the B9 consultations.

"The talks will focus on regional security issues and further support for Ukraine," the MFA added in the tweet.

The Bucharest Nine, a Polish-Romanian initiative, focuses on security in the Black Sea region and Ukraine.

The group - made of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - met for the last time in February, meeting U.S. president Joe Biden as he visited Poland.

The foreign ministers from central and eastern European countries will meet with NATO, U.S., Spain, Sweden, and Finland officials on Friday (March 31).

Key items on this year’s agenda will include European security, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and NATO’s support for the combatant Ukraine, Poland's MFA spokesperson Łukasz Jasina said on Wednesday.

France and a group of 45 states participating in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have invoked a special mechanism to investigate allegations linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the French foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The ministry said the move was made "due to the extremely serious impact of Russia's aggression against Ukraine on the Ukrainian civilian population and in particular on children."

The OSCE's so-called Moscow Mechanism provides the option of sending missions of experts to assist participating states in the resolution of a particular question or problem relating to the human dimension, according to the organisation's website.