Kyiv: the presence of Russians at the OSCE mission has doubled in one year
The number of representatives of the Russian Federation and countries friendly to it that are part of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) has increased significantly over the past year, notes Iryna Herashchenko, the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and Ukraine's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Tripartite Contact Group.
"Very often in the mission there are representatives of those countries that have special sentiments towards Moscow, and sometimes they do not notice the obvious shelling. Over the past year, incidentally, the presence of Russians in the OSCE SMM has doubled, and the presence of Serbs and Belarusians has increased several times. We would like to say that it is very important that everyone who works at the OSCE SMM should be unbiased and impartial about the performance of their duties," Herashchenko said in an interview with TSN.
At the same time, she stressed that Ukraine is very grateful to the OSCE observers.
"They are civil, unarmed people who work in harsh conditions, particularly in the occupied territory. Every day they risk becoming victims of aggression [or] misunderstanding, or even victims of an attack," the vice-speaker said.
"On the other hand, if we do not honestly talk about the imperfection of this monitoring procedure, which manifests itself very often, it would be wrong with respect to our country," the politician stressed.
Herashchenko also said that other countries, even those "having sentiments towards Russia," are not aggressors towards Ukraine, "so, on our part, we really have no reason to suspect representatives of these friendly countries in something improper."
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine began its work on March 21, 2014 in connection with the appeal of the Government of Ukraine to the OSCE and the consensus decision of all 57 OSCE participating countries.
The SMM is an unarmed civil mission that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in all regions of Ukraine. Its main tasks are to impartially and objectively observe the situation in Ukraine and report on it, as well as to promote dialogue between all parties to the conflict.