VIENNA, February 20. /TASS/. The Russian Permanent Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Saturday it was surprised by the fact that the organization’s leadership was not calling upon Kiev to implement the Minsk agreements.
In a Twitter post, the Russian diplomats said they were "surprised by reaction" of OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Zbigniew Rau, his Special Representative for Ukraine Mikko Kinnunen and OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid on the situation in eastern Ukraine.
"All of them reproduced statements of Ukrainian military command that 'reports on preparations by Ukrainian Armed Forces for an offensive are disinformation,'" the mission said. "All this instead of calling on Kiev to comply with the MinskAgreements and Measures to strengthen ceasefire of 22/07/2020. Meanwhile, they were silent when OSCE SMM [Special Monitoring Mission] confirmed in October 2021 offensive actions by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Donetsk region. Impartiality, you say?"
The Russian diplomats also lamented the fact that Rau and Kinnunen "once again - did not heed the serious warnings, made by Russia during their visit to Moscow on 15 February 2022."
On Friday, the leaders of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LPR and DPR), Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, announced the evacuation of the republics’ inhabitants to Russia, citing the increasing threat of hostilities. All-out mobilization was announced in the republics on Saturday.
According to presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin was watching the situation in Ukraine closely, and believed it to be extremely dangerous due to the Kiev government’s provocations.
OSCE Chairman-in-Office Zbigniew Rau and Secretary General Helga Schmid issued a statement earlier in the day, saying they "deplore the spreading of disinformation about an imminent military action by Ukrainian government forces; this critically affects the civilian population in the conflict zone.".