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Europe, Russia to help OSCE mission in Ukraine with drones — Italian FM

Monitoring is necessary to guarantee the implementation of the main provision of the Minsk agreements — ceasefire, Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini says

© ITAR-TASS/Konstantin Sazonchik

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Russia to help OSCE observers at Russia-Ukraine border

MILANO, October 17. /TASS/. Europe and Russia are ready to provide the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with drones and military personnel to maintain them for the monitoring of the Russian-Ukrainian border and ceasefire agreement implementation, Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said on Friday.

“The sides expressed readiness to provide drones and the necessary military personnel for their maintenance. Such mission must be approved by the OSCE Permanent Council,” Mogherini said in a statement following a meeting on Friday with her Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Sergey Lavrov and Pavlo Klimkin respectively.

According to Mogherini, such “monitoring is necessary to guarantee the implementation of the main provision of the Minsk agreements — ceasefire.”

Earlier in the week, Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Ertugrul Apakan said over 300 OSCE staff members from 41 countries were currently working in Ukraine.

In August, the OSCE signed a contract with the Austrian company Schiebel on supplies of drones for the mission in Ukraine.

However, the timeframe for using the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones, on a permanent basis has been changed several times over the failure to agree on technical and political issues of using UAVs in Ukraine.

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