The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine proposes to exclude representatives of Russia from the OSCE mission

Representatives of Russia, as the parties to the conflict in the Donbass, should be excluded from the special monitoring mission of the OSCE. This was stated by Deputy Head of the Main Command Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Major General Alexander Rozamznin on the air of the Ukrainian fifth channel.

"The months of joint work with the OSCE gave me confidence that the vast majority of the OSCE officers working in the ATO zone applies to work with great understanding and objectivity. I will say more: if the group does not have representatives of the Russian Federation (...) - this group is absolutely objective and it gives objective information," Roszyznin said.

There is no alternative to the OSCE SMM for today, the general emphasized. However, Ukraine must do everything so that it does not include representatives of Russia.

“We must do everything to exclude representatives of the Russian Federation, we need to prove that they are a side of the conflict,” Roszyznin emphasized.

A special monitoring mission has been operating in Ukraine since March 2014 in connection with the appeal of the Ukrainian government in the OSCE and the consensus decision of all 57 participating countries. Its main tasks are impartially and objectively observe the situation in Ukraine and report on it, as well as contribute to the dialogue between all aspects of the conflict. As of April, 429 observers from 42 countries are part of April, according to the mission report. Of these, 23 people are Russian citizens.

Another OSCE observation mission operates at Russian checkpoints "Gukovo" and "Donetsk" in the Rostov region on the border with Ukraine. It will only consist of 22 observers. The constant council of representatives of 57 OSCE member countries, where decisions are made by a full consensus, cannot expand its composition. This decision is blocked by Russia.

In December, a regular representative of the United States under the OSCE Daniel Baer said that Russia has already prevented the expansion of the mandate of this mission to other checkpoints and the border sections between them. This causes serious doubts about the desire of Russia to fulfill the critical moments of the Minsk protocol, one of the points of which provides for the role of the OSCE in monitoring and verification on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian international border.