KIEV, May 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s parliament ratified on Thursday a memorandum with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on the deployment of an OSCE special monitoring mission in the country, with 272 deputies voting in favor, well above the required minimum of 226 votes.

The document signed by the sides in Vienna on April 14, envisages mission’s activity across the whole country. The central office will be in capital Kiev, while regional offices will be opened in Kherson, Odessa, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernivtsi and Luhansk, both in the west and in the east of the country.

In line with the memorandum, the mission has the right to open other offices in Ukraine. The memorandum also envisages guarantee of observers’ free contacts with political parties, non-governmental organizations as well as individuals and groups of citizens.

The explanatory note says the ratification of the memorandum and its enactment will create necessary conditions for the functioning of an OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, on May 26, the OSCE special observer mission in Ukraine said it had lost contact with its team working in the Donetsk Region.

According to an OSCE news release, the organization was last in touch with the group of four monitors at 18:00 local time on Monday, when the group was involved in planned patrols of Donetsk's eastern part. The whereabouts of the team are still unknown.