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OSCE must explain what its mission in Donbass was doing — Russian Foreign Ministry

Its representatives’ activity in this region "has had nothing to do with monitoring for a long time," spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out

MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe must explain what its special monitoring mission in Donbass has been doing since 2014, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel on Tuesday.

"This organization must make corresponding statements now to explain what it is doing in the region and in what format," she said.

Zakharova stressed that the very term "mission" was not quite appropriate in this particular case, because the OSCE representatives’ activity in this region "has had nothing to do with monitoring for a long time."

Earlier, the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova said that the mission’s foreign personnel had left the republic, but labor contracts with the mission’s local personnel were prolonged by one year, till March 31, 2023. However, at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council no agreement was achieved regarding the mission’s future in the region and the status and legal grounds for the mission’s further presence remain unclear. Nikonorova said that the republic was open to a dialogue, the OSCE was aware of that, but at the same time refrained from official contacts. Later, the Donetsk Republic’s foreign minister said that the OSCE SMM must stop its activity in the DPR by April 30.

The OSCE’s mission was deployed to Ukraine on March 21, 2014. The decision to establish it was supported by all of the organization’s 57 member-states. The mission had a staff of about 1,000 monitors. At the beginning of March OSCE Secretary-General Helga Schmid said that nearly 500 SMM monitors had been evacuated from Ukraine following the start of Russia’s special military operation.

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Ukraine crisis Ukraine OSCE Russian Foreign Ministry

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