MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. The implementation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s idea of deploying UN monitors along the line of engagement in Donbass in order to ensure the security of OSCE monitors will require considerable efforts by all parties concerned, the director of the Center for Current Politics, Aleksei Chesnakov, told TASS.
First and foremost, a number of specific conditions will have to be met.
"Forces and weapons must be disengaged along the whole line," Chesnakov said. "So far this has been done only along two short sections. Secondly, the law on the special status of Donbass must operate on the permanent basis and in accordance with the Steinmeier Formula. At the moment the special status is under threat, because in October the law’s term of operation will formally expire. Thirdly, it is necessary to increase the number of unarmed monitors of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. Today there are not enough of them. Fourthly, the mandate of the UN armed mission for assistance to the OSCE SMM must be discussed in the Contact Group with the participation of self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics and Ukraine."
Chesnakov said that today "there is no clarity as to the list of countries prepared to provide personnel and financing for such a mission or what the mission must be equipped and armed with."
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told a news conference following the BRICS summit that Russia would present to the UN Security Council a draft resolution on the deployment of UN peacekeepers along the disengagement line in Donbass for maintaining the safety of OSCE personnel. He pointed out that the deployment of UN forces would be possible only after weapons were pulled back and that issue agreed with the officials of the self-proclaimed Donbass republics.