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Ukraine will officially request UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas

Kiev will on Friday start consultations in the UN Secretariat on the format and the mandate of the future mission

UNITED NATIONS, March 20. /TASS/. Kiev is due to submit Friday a formal request to the United Nations on the deployment of the peacekeeping mission in the conflict zone in Donbas.

Ukraine’s UN envoy Yury Sergeyev said earlier Kiev would on the same day launch consultations in the UN Secretariat on the format and the mandate of the future mission.

"We have received instructions in that respect, and starting from tomorrow [Friday] we will begin formal consultations in the Secretariat on the format and mandate [of the future mission]," Sergeyev told TASS.

The UN press service confirmed that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) plans to hold consultations on the issue Friday. "We cannot say at what level they will be held," the spokesperson said.

Russia’s envoy to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said in an interview with TASS last week that Kiev’s idea on sending peacekeepers to Donbass was a "propagandistic thing that even Ukrainians themselves do not know how to treat."

"The most rational way" to ensure sustainable implementation of ceasefire is to strengthen the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine, Churkin said.

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 Minsk peace agreements.