MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/. Moscow calls on Paris and Berlin to refrain from groundless accusations against Russia over an incident with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Donbass before the end of the investigation, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
"The joint statement made by Germany and France on November 1 over the loss on October 27 of a long-range unmanned aerial vehicles belonging to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine is embarrassing," she said. "We call on France, Germany and others to refrain further on from the public escalation of tensions with anti-Russian background ahead of a thorough and transparent investigation into incidents that occur in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine."
"Citing the mission’s data, the statement notes that Russia and separatists supported by it are responsible for the incident," Zakharova went on. "It is significant that the authors of the statement made these charges without any grounds and, naturally, without waiting for the end of the investigation into the incident. As we know, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission already came into contact with DPR representatives, who promised all the necessary support."
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed that the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) turned to the SMM management asking to coordinate flight routes for drones and equip them with flashers. "It should be noted that back on October 22 the DPR and LPR sent an address to the mission containing a request to notify them about the flight routes of OSCE’s unmanned aerial vehicles beforehand and equip them with flashers," Zakharova said. "It all is necessary, as the Ukrainian military tend to use strike UAVs as combat aircraft against Donbass civil facilities more often."
"We consider it necessary to remind that it is the ninth incident involving a long-range unmanned aerial vehicle since the start of the OSCE Mission’s operation in Ukraine in 2014. That said, five of them were lost over the territory controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, our partners in the Normandy Format preferred not to notice these losses as usual," she concluded.
The SMM’s drone was lost on October 27 not far from the Russian-Ukrainian border near the village of Nizhnekrynskoye, Donetsk Region.