MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. Russia’s permanent representative at the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich has described the Ukrainian unauthorized firing range near the border with Russia as a provocation.
"We are drawing attention to provocative actions on the border with Russia," Lukashevich said at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council on Thursday. According to the special monitoring mission, Ukrainian radicals have created an illegal firing range in the Kherson Region of Ukraine on the border with Russia.
"Firing practices on the border are held with the connivance of law enforcement agencies, which are ostensibly unable to apprehend the abusers, although even monitors saw them," Lukashevich said.
According to the Russian diplomat, the "mission noted limited freedom of movement across the engagement line."
"Kiev’s blockade forces elderly people and children to spend many hours and even days in lines at Ukrainian checkpoints," he said. "Military and police personnel use this situation to extort bribes at gunpoint," he said.
Russia believes that such cases deserve no less attention than threats to foreign monitors.
"Neither is permissible," Lukashevich said.
In particular, he dwelt on Ukraine’s tactics.
"It is very simple and confined to maintaining tensions for delaying the process of political negotiations over the modality of elections, the special status and amnesty by enforcing a law that prohibits prosecution and punishment of persons in connection of events that took place in individual districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine."
Lukashevich said that amnesty is needed not just for Donbass civilians, but for many Ukrainian politicians, including those who currently take senior posts, those who made the decision to start the punitive operation in Donbass.