Kremlin: peacekeepers in the Donbas should be deployed only along the contact line
The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said on Friday that Russia once again agrees only to a UN security mission on the line of demarcation, reports UNIAN.
"Now, a Russian draft resolution on the participation of the UN peacekeeping forces is being discussed and finalized in the UN. There has been a lot of speculation on this issue, there was a lot of speculation in the Ukrainian media that peacekeepers will allegedly be deployed across the entire Donbas. I would like to recall what it’s all about. This is a very important issue. They will be deployed along the contact line where the OSCE observers are located, in order to ensure their security. No more and no less. All double reasoning is inadmissible - here it is necessary to be extremely clear,” the agency quotes Zakharova as saying.
She noted that the draft resolution was being worked on at the moment. There is a Russian proposal - the Russian draft resolution as well as proposals from other countries - to talk about what will be sent to the Security Council's table for voting and when, although it is early, she added.
On September 22, TASS reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov presented to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres the main aspects of the Russian initiative to deploy a mission from the global organization for the protection of OSCE Observers in the Donbas.
"An interesting exchange of views took place on the current issues on the agenda of the General Assembly and the UN Security Council," the agency quoted from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement. "Particular attention was paid to the situations in Ukraine, Syria and North Korea. In particular, Lavrov, at the request of his interlocutor, highlighted at length the content regarding the establishment of a UN mission to promote the protection of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in the southeast of Ukraine. "
Ukraine and its Western allies support the introduction of a peacekeeping mission to the entire territory of the separated Donetsk and Luhansk regions.