Putin agrees to armed OSCE mission in Donbass? DPR/LPR reps say no

RFE/RL
Thu, 20 Oct 2016 21:17 UTC

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It's okay, Putin, we'd be bored with these clowns too.

During negotiations in Berlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to the proposal to deploy an armed OSCE mission in Donbass, the president's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has stated.

In Berlin on Wednesday, the first summit of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France) in a year was held. Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Petro Poroshenko, and Francois Hollande, over the course of five hours, discussed the situation in Eastern Ukraine.

As Peskov emphasized, the question of deploying such a mission requires consideration and planning in the OSCE. According to him, Germany's chairmanship of the OSCE should be used to activate such work.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated earlier that Russia had agreed to the deployment of an armed OSCE mission.

At the same time, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics are opposing the OSCE military mission. The DPR's permanent representative to the Minsk negotiations, Denis Pushilin, stated: "According to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission's mandate in effect at the current moment on the territory of the conflict, the mission is civilian and unarmed."

According to him, the introduction of such major changes to the mandate and work of the mission can only be carried out with the complete agreement of all 57 OSCE member countries.

Pushilin called Poroshenko's statement on an armed OSCE mission in Donbass another attempt "to portray wishful thinking as reality."

"Putin stated that he is ready to extend the OSCE mission in the zone of the removal and storage points of heavy equipment, but there is not talk of any police mission and, what's more, an armed one, at the current moment," DPR National Council deputy Vladislav Berdichevsky told RIA Novosti.

Comment: LPR's permanent rep to Minsk, Vladislav Deynego, said the same thing:

But in reality, the Normandy Four believes that the OSCE observatory mission should be strengthened in the areas where forces and equipment are being withdrawn and in the places where heavy weapons are stored. Nothing more! In other words, in those places where the Ukrainian side, taking advantage of the absence of complete OSCE control, is constantly conjuring up heavy artillery systems, tanks, etc. and we can see all of this in the systematic shelling of the civilians in the residential areas of Donbass.

The prerequisites for deploying an armed mission in Donbass are not in place, Russia's permanent representative to the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich, believes: "First of all, there is no legislation on elections; second of all, it is unclear what this mission will do; and thirdly, the most important is that Donetsk and Lugansk will not accept any armed representatives of an international organization."

Lukashevich called the idea far from realistic and recalled that there already is a special monitoring mission which deals with specific tasks.

Comment: The four leaders agreed to draw up a new road map within in the next month in order to implement the Minsk agreements.

After six hours of talks on the wars in Ukraine and Syria in Berlin on October 19-20, German Chancellor Angela Merkel emerged to say the leaders "didn't achieve miracles," but the road map would enable all sides to keep pushing ahead with the 2015 Minsk peace agreement.

The leaders also discussed creating zones of disengagement between the warring parties in eastern Ukraine, as well as measures to improve the humanitarian situation there, she said. "It's urgently necessary to keep having such talks in order not to lose momentum," she said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the road map "should have the sequence of the implementation of the Minsk agreements and guarantee their implementation." He also said they agreed to withdrawals of Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists in four new areas on the front line of the fighting in the Donbas region.
...
[Poroshenko] said elections in Donbass would not occur until all foreign forces are withdrawn.

RFE/RL also quotes the Poroshenko claim of an armed OSCE mission. But look at what Putin said in his statement after the talks:

We confirmed our readiness to expand the OSCE mission in the disengagement zone and in locations where heavy equipment is stored.

Which is precisely what the DPR and LPR sources say.