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Sending peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine unlikely — Russia’s envoy to UN

On Tuesday, the DPR authorities demanded that an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council be convened to consider the issue of sending a peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine
Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin ЕРА/JUSTIN LANE
Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin
© ЕРА/JUSTIN LANE

UNITED NATIONS, November 26. /TASS/. Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said Wednesday he believes sending peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine requested by the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is unlikely.

“I think this is unlikely,” the diplomat told journalists in the headquarters of the global organization while heading to the final meeting of the UN Security Council in November.

On Tuesday, the DPR authorities demanded that an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council be convened to consider the issue of sending a peacekeeping contingent involving Russian representatives to eastern Ukraine.

In its latest report on the situation in the east of Ukraine of November 14, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) noted that the situation was quickly deteriorating in the city of Donetsk.

A decision was made after a special evaluation mission that visited the city November 10-12 to send a small humanitarian convoy there. However, the UN Secretariat has not named any terms when it could be sent.

According to the United Nations, more than 4,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s south-east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire at talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.

The ceasefire took effect the same day but has reportedly occasionally been violated.

The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE adopted a memorandum on September 19 in Minsk, which outlined the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.

The nine-point document in particular stipulates a ban on the use of all armaments and withdrawal of weapons with the calibers of over 100 millimeters to a distance of 15 kilometers from the contact line from each side. The OSCE was tasked with controlling the implementation of memorandum provisions.