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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Ukrainian foreign minister: proposed UN peacekeeping mission for Donbass could be civilian

UNITED NATIONS, April 30. /TASS/. Kiev is discussing in the United Nations the possibility for deploying peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine and is convinced that this mission could help to carry out free and fair elections in Donbass and also to disarm and withdraw illegal armed groups, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin told reporters on Wednesday.

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"I already had a number of meetings with P5 [UN Security Council permanent members] representatives, UN Secretariat, discussing, of course, the situation in Donbass, discussing the possibility to bring UN presence to Donbass... It could be a civilian mission, it could be a civilian-military mission," he said.

Klimkin stressed that the mission should care about the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

"In the sense of helping to prepare free and fair elections, in the sense of assisting [in] implementing the law on special status in Donetsk and Lugansk, including disarmament, including pulling back of illegal armed formations and many, many of such issues," he said.

The issue of a possible deployment of international peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine is often discussed during the contacts of Ukraine’s authorities with the UN Secretariat.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon told Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko in a phone conversation on April 20 that the decision on sending peacekeepers to Donbass can be taken only by the UN Security Council. Diplomats say however Kiev has not yet sent an official request to the Security Council to consider the proposal of the UN presence in the conflict zone.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with radio stations last week that Kiev’s initiative on peacekeepers was aimed at splitting the country into two parts. He earlier said Moscow would not vote in the UN Security Council on the deployment of UN peacekeepers to Ukraine.

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Eastern Ukraine

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