DONETSK, June 01, /ITAR-TASS/. Authorities of southeast Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic do not have any information about whereabouts of four observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Co-chairman of Donetsk republican government Denis Pushilin told Itar-Tass by phone on Sunday.
“We do not have them,” he said, adding that information coming in media had been checked, but no reports had been made about their whereabouts yet.
People’s Mayor of the Donetsk regional city of Slavyansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev told Itar-Tass on Sunday that he did not have any information about the fate of four OSCE observers, the phone contact was lost with them on Monday evening when they were on the way from the city of Lugansk to Donetsk in southeast Ukraine. “I can say now that there are no OSCE observers in Slavyansk now,” Ponomarev said, noting that there was only information that a group of 11 OSCE observers was released from captivity after the phone contact had been lost with them on Wednesday.
Media reports were made on Sunday with the reference to Vyacheslav Ponomarev about the release of all OSCE observers in Donetsk region, but his words were interpreted incorrectly.
The OSCE stated on Tuesday that the group of global organisation’s observers went missing on Monday evening on the way from Lugansk to Donetsk. The organisation noted that members of the OSCE monitoring mission had been detained at a checkpoint and after that the phone contact had been lost with them. These OSCE observers are citizens of Denmark, Turkey, Switzerland and Estonia.
Another group of 11 OSCE observers has gone missing for several hours at the city of Shakhtersk on Wednesday. However, they came back luckily in the evening on the same day in Donetsk and the phone communication was restored with them.