MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/. Moscow believes that Kiev’s demands to deploy a UN mission to protect European security agency observers first of all along the Russian-Ukrainian border violates the succession of the Minsk agreements stages, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
"Right after submission of the Russian draft resolution, it was distorted in many Ukrainian media outlets, presented in an absolutely different way," Zakharova said. "One of the serious problems in the settlement is ensuring the safety of the OSCE observers. With this in view, on September 5 we submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council under which a UN mission equipped with small arms is to be deployed to protect the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE," she went on.
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She pointed to "a fundamentally crucial moment" - a UN mission should not substitute for the Contact Group or the Normandy Four.
"Besides, it is important to adhere to certain terms. The mandate of the mission must be clearly restricted in its functions, the deployment of the mission comes after disengagement of the sides and pullback of hardware and only with the consent of the sides," Zakharova said.
"Demands we hear from Kiev that the mission must be deployed on all territories of the DPR and LPR (the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics) including along the whole line of the border with Russia, wreck the existing formats and succession of the moves on the Minsk agreements," the diplomat said.
She reiterated that control over the border is the final point of the Minsk-2 agreements after Kiev’s implementation of a number of political commitments.