Separatists reject proposal for OSCE armed mission in the Donbas
Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine expressed their opposition to the deployment of an OSCE armed police mission in the region. The Chairman of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, stated on the 24th of October in Moscow that the presence of any foreign groups in the territory of the self-proclaimed is contrary to the set of measures taken to consolidate peace.
Pushilin believes that the deployment of an OSCE armed group in the region would require changing the mission and expanding the mandate of this organization in the region. “The current mission is civilian monitoring,” he explained.
The Chairman of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic also cast doubt that the decision on the deployment of the armed police mission in the Donbas will be supported by all 57 OSCE member States. “There probably will be those countries that will be against it,” he said.
The representative of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic to the Contact Group on resolution of the conflict in the Donbas, Vladislav Deinego, also negatively assessed the idea of OSCE armed observers in the region. According to him, the residents of the Donbas will perceive any foreign armed mission as intervention and it will become an additional destabilizing factor. “There will be consequences for those who try to take up arms and get between warring parties,” Deinego stated.
The presence of an OSCE Armed Police Mission in the region was specified in the road map that the leaders of the Normandy Four agreed to at the Summit in Berlin that took place on the 19th of October. One day later, the Press Secretary for the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that Vladimir Putin agreed with the deployment of OSCE Armed Police Mission in the Donbas.
“The OSCE Armed Police Mission can be called whatever you like. In general, Putin agreed to the deployment of such a mission during negotiations,” Peskov noted.
Later, Peskoev insisted that Putin only gave "potential consent."