VIENNA, November 11. /TASS/. Ukrainian representatives in the OSCE have tried to mislead the international community, Russia’s permanent representative to the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich said at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on Thursday.

As the Russian diplomat said, the situation "on the ground" in Donbass worsened lately following the Ukrainian military’s offensive operations in the area of Staromaryevka, in the security zone between the parties’ forward positions on October 25-26.

"At the Permanent Council’s meeting on October 28 Ukraine’s representatives in the OSCE tried to mislead the international community by claiming that the Ukrainian military units did not change their positions or participate in the seizure of Staromaryevka," Lukashevich said. "However, the facts subsequently cited by the Special Monitoring Mission and Ukrainian officials’ public statements confirmed that this was not so. The Ukrainian army did carry out offensive operations in that area. This resulted in a local surge of tensions and more casualties and destruction."

According to the OSCE SMM, Lukashevich stressed, since the end of October there has been a noticeable increase in the number of cases in which large caliber weapons were used. Alongside this the Ukrainian army was actively redeploying such weapons by rail. Lukashevich said that by undermining truce with armed provocations, disrupting the opportunities for its control, disavowing the mechanism of security guarantees, refusing to conduct a dialogue with the representatives of Donbass in the Contact Group on a political settlement and claiming that the Minsk Accords were irrelevant Kiev challengingly demonstrated that "the Ukrainian leadership has no peace plan for Donbass."

"Ukraine’s leaders consider further steps in the east of the country exclusively from the position of strength. This is seen in the amendments being introduced to legislation, including the ‘transitional period’ concept, which Kiev plans to adopt to bolster its pullout from the Minsk Accords," Lukashevich said.