VIENNA, November 9 /TASS/. President of the Swiss Confederation Didier Burkhalter, the OSCE chairperson-in-office, has expressed his concern with the recent shelling of Donetsk that claimed human lives. He said he was “very concerned about a resurgence of violence in the eastern regions of Ukraine and about activities leading to more fragility instead of further stabilization of the situation” in a statement published on the OSCE website.
Earlier this week, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in eastern Ukraine published a report on the November 5 shelling of a Donetsk school in which two under aged children were killed and four were wounded. Russia’s Permanent Representative to OSCE, Andrei Kelin, said the reporting by OSCE monitors confirmed the information received from the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian Investigation Committee that the school had been shelled from Ukrainian army positions and described the evidence provided by the Ukrainian side, which denied its complicity to the tragedy, as fake.
The OSCE chairperson-in-office “urged all sides to act responsibly and to do all in their power to further consolidate the ceasefire.”
“It is decisive that all sides strictly observe the commitments made in the framework of the Minsk protocol and memorandum and stay away from acts which could lead to new escalation,” he added.
Didier Burkhalter called on all sides to provide conditions that allow for unhindered SMM monitoring in accordance with the SMM mandate as approved by the 57 OSCE states.