VIENNA, May 31 /ITAR-TASS/. Talks to release four observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) detained near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Monday drag on, Russian Permanent Representative at the OSCE Andrey Kelin told Itar-Tass on Saturday.
Meanwhile, he noted that “Contact is being maintained with them, they are going on the line through Skype and are particularly talking with observers from Russia.”
“But, unfortunately, their release is dragged on,” he said, but could not specify how much time talks might take.
The OSCE stated on Tuesday that a group of OSCE observers had been reported missing on the way from the city of Lugansk to Donetsk in east Ukraine on Monday evening. The world organisation noted that members of the OSCE monitoring mission had been detained at a checkpoint, after that the phone contact had been lost with them. These OSCE observers are citizens of Denmark, Turkey, Switzerland and Estonia.
Representatives of people’s militia detained OSCE observers, Stella Khorosheva, spokesperson of people’s mayor in Donetsk regional city of Slavyansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev, told Itar-Tass on Thursday. “Yes, indeed [they were detained]. We recommended OSCE representatives to refrain from movement at the places where hostilities are on. But as they did not take this recommendation seriously, we had to detain them,” she said.