KIEV, March 19. /TASS/. Ukraine’s mission to the EU has officially handed over a letter to Brussels requesting that the Council of the European Union should consider deploying peacekeepers to the country’s east, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
The mission has requested that Europeans should "properly consider this issue and launch consultations on the start of the EU operation as part of common security and defence policy," the ministry says.
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The operation led by the EU will "contribute to the restoration of peace and stability in eastern Ukraine through creating proper political and security conditions for the successful implementation of the Minsk agreements and support of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission," it says.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, adopted an address to the UN Security Council and the European Council requesting deployment of peacekeepers to Ukraine. The document was submitted by President Pyotr Poroshenko.
Poroshenko signed a decree on March 2 to enact a resolution of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on asking the UN and the European Union to stage an international peacekeeping operation in Ukraine.
The heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, in a joint statement on Wednesday stressed that the request was against the logics of the peace plan.
"This is another attempt to withdraw from the Minsk agreements which is hidden behind good intentions," the statement reads.