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UN peacekeepers unlikely to be deployed to Ukraine anytime soon

Consensus on a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Ukraine is unlikely to be reached in the near future, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said

UNITED NATIONS, May 11. /TASS/. Consensus on a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Ukraine is unlikely to be reached in the near future, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with Russian media outlets ahead of his visit to Moscow.

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Zelensky proposes creating new talks format for Donbass ‘with powerful actors’

"There are very different positions in relation to the mandate and the role that a peacekeeping force might have in Ukraine so I would say it is not likely that [a] consensus will be established in the immediate future," he pointed out.

In September 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with an initiative to deploy a United Nations mission to the line of contact in Donbass in order to ensure the safety of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission’s personnel. Putin said later that such a mission could be widened to encompass the entire zone of conflict, provided that the self-proclaimed Donbass republics greenlight such a move. However, the Ukrainian authorities sought to place their emphasis on the need for a full-fledged UN peacekeeping mission in the region, which would act as a temporary administration so that power could be transferred to Kiev later.

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