All news

Donetsk republic urges OSCE to monitor military hardware in Ukraine’s central regions

Activities of Ukrainian armed units have been a matter of growing concern in recent weeks

MOSCOW, March 23. /TASS/. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has proposed that members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine should include into their monitoring two Ukrainian regions, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk, where movement of Ukrainian military hardware had been registered recently, DPR Special Envoy at the Minsk talks Denis Pushilin’s press secretary said on Facebook on Wednesday.

"A proposal of Denis Pushilin to expand the area of OSCE SMM monitoring has become rather significant," Viktoriya Talakina wrote, noting that "recently the intelligence of the Donetsk People’s Republic has been registering movement of a great number of military hardware in the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, neighboring the Donetsk and Lugansk regions."

"In Denis Pushilin’s opinion, the presence of OSCE SMM members in the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions will allow to register such combat movements as well as to ask the Ukrainian leadership questions," she said.

"That is why, DPR envoy suggested that Mr (Martin) Sajdik should consider a possibility of expanding borders of the Special Monitoring Group’s activities," Talakina said.

Activities of Ukrainian armed units have been a matter of growing concern in recent weeks, she said.

"Ukraine’s Armed Forces have come unilaterally into ‘grey zones’, reducing the distance between the sides in certain areas to 70 meters," Pushilin’s press secretary said. "This proximity to the enemy provokes constant combat clashes practically along the whole contact line. Besides, Ukrainian military’s advance has caused a tense situation around the Donetsk filter plant."

Talakina said that the DPR envoy had raised the issues at the Wednesday meeting of the Contact Group resolving the Ukraine conflict.

Pushilin noted that Ukraine was ignoring the Contact Group’s decisions to ban firing exercises. DPR militiamen had been reporting about these exercises conducted in banned zones, she said.

"If Ukraine wants to find a peaceful solution to the conflict at least in the distant future, its representatives must implement the Minsk agreements and corresponding documents," she said in conclusion.